#But I'd absolutely have to do so because I consider them distinct characters

[seananmcguire]

Hi Seanan! I recently threw some more of your creatures into the my DnD5e-ish game I'm running- I homebrewed a Cait Sidhe race, and let my players rescue a colony of Aeslin Mice (redubbed "loremice," so I don't have to figure out what "Aeslin" means when my players ask.) The mice have so far named a God of Smokey Rescue, a God of Deceptive Size, and a God of Ominous Declaration. :)

I realize I could make up whatever rules I want for their specifics, since it's my game and I haven't gotten my players to read your work yet, so they wouldn't notice any inaccuracies. But I think it'd be cool to portray them as accurately as possible to the way you see them.

So! If you're willing, I have a couple questions!

1. Do you know what the rough ratio of Shadow Roads distance to not-Shadow-Roads distance is? I'm homebrewing a spell for the Cait Sidhe Shadow Roads thing, and I'd like to give my Cait Sidhe player some hard numbers to work with when they wanna push the limits of their range.

2. For the same player, can you share what the Shadow Roads look like to a Cait Sidhe? We can assume Tybalt isn't as blind as October is in there, but I can't remember her ever asking him precisely how he navigates.

3. I was gonna remove the Aeslin "God/Priestess" gender distinction for my loremice, because the women at my table would have questions and I wouldn't know how to justify it. I don't expect you'd mind much, but it feels mildly disrespectful to the source material anyway (like, what if I'm just using this as an excuse to remove it, because I dislike this Aeslin habit myself?). So I'm torn. Do you know an explanation I could give my players to make sure they don't mistake the mice as sexist?

3.5. I was also considering a compromise solution to this. I'm considering making all the player characters "Gods" to the mice initially, then having the mice switch to using "Priest(ess)" to refer to PCs who converse most directly with the mice, who make the most effort to force their way past the HAILs and be treated as equals. I'd have them act slightly more casual and less reverent to the Priests and Priestesses, make it easier for them to hold productive conversations with the mice than it is for Gods. I felt this could pay enough homage to your work to alleviate my baseless guilt, while beating the potential sexism allegations. And since I have you here on Tumblr, I wanted to get your input on it- is that uncomfortably far from your vision of Aeslin Worship?

If you can't answer any of these, either because they feel spoilery or because you haven't canonized answers to them in your own head, that's fine! I can figure it out. But you've found time for my Tumblr asks before, so I figure I may as well run it by you.

Maybe I'll add Cu Sidhe as a playable race next... if my players are mature enough to handle how I believe it's pronounced, haha.

This is all very neat, but I started my numbered list before I said that, and can't get out of it!

About 1:10.

The Shadow Roads are absolute blackness even to the Cait Sidhe. They're just a little warmer/it's possible to breathe there, if not comfortably. They navigate by feel, and generally "know" when it's time to exit to the "real world" again.

It's not disrespectful to the source material, honest. The mice who live with the Price family, whether Portland or Penton Hall, are still operating under a foundational commandment that Beth Evans didn't know she was giving, when she told them they couldn't set her above her husband, who they had already declared a god. So the mice aren't sexist, because they barely comprehend human sexual dimorphism: they're just following the orders they were given when they were first adopted by this particular liturgical tradition. A colony that hadn't received that commandment could pick any other set of titles. As a rule, you will have two: one for people who are worshiped but not listened to, and one the other way around.

That works!

[kazarinn]

I watched Last Evolution a while back and found it to be extremely grim and cynical with its talk of "potential" but i'd be willing to watch the movie again if the translation was at fault if there was a more accurate sub. I see a couple sub groups did translations for the movie, but I wasn't sure if there was one you recommended or worked on? Otherwise I'd be very interested in hearing what bothered you about the official translation, regardless of my own feelings about what I watched, but I was having a hard time finding a post on your blog that talked about it directly.

Hello! Yes, I would absolutely agree the official subs are a mess to the point I can't even recommend the movie with them. Personally, I think any of the fansubs should be fine; the one I personally had a hand in was the L Subs version (which I did not translate myself but was lightly involved with the subbing process for), but to my understanding, there is at least one other well-done one done by a fan who clearly knows and loves the series.

(I actually am tentatively interested in maybe trying it out myself in the future for the hell of it, but I'm not super pressed to do it ASAP because there are so many other things with higher priority. Other than subs of the movie itself, I also personally translated the Shueisha Mirai Bunko version of the novelization, which doesn't have a 1:1 transcription of the dialogue but is still more accurate than whatever was going on with the official translation, or at least I would like to believe.)

I haven't made a proper post breaking it down yet, but what I will say is that, as someone who has spent a long time translating for this series and has gone through the movie's dialogue multiple times (way too many times?) in Japanese, it is absolutely, 100%, for sure, not supposed to be a cynical movie. The official translation had butchered a number of things related to that, such as:

The fact that they didn't preserve the nuances related to 宿命 and 運命, an issue that my senior translator (who translated the L Subs version) and I consider to be important enough that my senior wrote about it on Twitter and I touched on it in my own discussion of Crest names. There are certain distinct contexts where the word that means "something truly unavoidable" and the word that means "something we are guided towards" come up.

The fact that Menoa's motives make no sense in the official subs; certain lines are translated to suggest the opposite of what they should, and certain lines will directly contradict each other, meaning the only thing that a viewer can get out of it is that "she wants to save everyone" and that she might even be right about her ideas (which probably doesn't help the viewing of the movie as cynical, since it sounds like Taichi and Yamato are rejecting her "good but extreme" intentions at worst and not her distorted view of the world as a whole).

The conversation between Gennai and Taichi in the middle of the movie has about two or three critical lines that are mistranslated, and those are probably some of the most important lines in terms of establishing the movie's themes, especially given the issue of "potential"/"possibility" that you mentioned.

In general (well, this has very little to do with your question, but I feel the need to vent about this anyway) the official translation is just plain klutzy about everything. There's no conscientiousness about character voice, one of the most important things in translating Digimon works. References to the original series' plot points or lore don't match up at all, and I don't get the impression the translator or editor was familiar with the original series. (Adventure tri. and The Beginning's subs had this problem too, but not to the same degree; in the case of Adventure tri., the lore was vaguely referenced or contradictory in Japanese to the extent a compliant English translation probably wouldn't have even been possible, and in the case of The Beginning, the issues were less common and less plot-relevant.) Even beyond just plot-important lines, there are far too many lines that are semantically mistranslated. All of it makes the movie an unpleasant experience to watch in terms of sheer vibe, and that's something I think is far more important than people tend to treat it as.

I will give a disclaimer that I feel obligated to give during these situations: if you did not like the movie, while I think it is highly likely that you'll enjoy it better with a properly done translation, I cannot guarantee that it'll turn your opinion over 180 degrees and make it your favorite movie ever. I am a translator before I am a literary critic, so while literary analysis is important for a translator, there is a point I have to hold back before it starts turning into my own fanfiction. But it's exactly because of this that the official translation is so poisonous, because a translator's job should be to maximize potential for readings and interpretations for others. If a work could potentially have a "nonsense interpretation" and a "sensible interpretation", and a translation outright invalidates the possibility of having the sensible interpretation because of how sloppy and nonsensical it is, it becomes a perfect example of what I've referred to as "insidiously bad translation", where it looks passable on the surface but is far more poisonous than it seems.

[yersina]

a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 3)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [x] [pt 4] [pt 5]

onwards and upwards!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the third language and will contain spoilers! it also assumes that you know what all of the symbols mean already.

have a huge soft spot for this language the most out of all of them haha. again, missed part of the gameplay for the dictionary—i couldn’t find the last fruit to feed the monkey lmao. also, i had the game open while writing this post this time, so more screenshots, yay!

visually, i'd say that this compares to arabic script or devanagari, especially with the line that runs through all of the characters, but it's still a logographic language. culturally/artistically, i think it's meant to represent how flow-y and artistic the bards are haha. i also remember seeing something once about the thai script (which this is not entirely dissimilar to) and how it was originally written on organic matter (eg leaves, bark, etc idk) and needed to have loops in order to work against the grain of the leaves. i haven’t done my due diligence and confirmed that in any historical or anthropological context yet, but it seems plausible to me?? the bards do seem to have a more tropical environment, tho again it’s likely just an artistic decision haha

once again, in terms of visual patterns in the words, we can see that a verb is indicated by a dot in the top right hand corner. the people words ("warrior", "bard", "you", "i/me") seem to all have a swoopy symbol that crosses the horizontal line, which is interesting. the only exception is "idiot", which might be because it's primarily functions as an adjective. locative nouns, including the cardinal directions, have a dot below the line. the only noun that includes a dot is “compass”, which might be a reflection of its connection to location? as in it contains locations, or navigates to locations? i’m uncertain. interestingly, the only non-person nouns that touch the horizontal line are “monster” and “greeting”, which might also be indicative of the senses of those words—if we recategorize “monster” with the people-words and “greeting” with the verbs, then we don’t have any outliers. however, this would include a word without a dot in the verb category. perhaps at some point in the evolution of the bard’s language, “greeting” lost its verb features? again, i’m unsure and possibly reading too far into it lmao.

this is our first OSV (object subject verb) language! ngl, i was annoyed by the way the game chose to translate the meaning into english—there are plenty of verb-final languages out there irl, no need to be so literal with the translation lol. amusingly, we see this being the most apparent when translating between the bards’ language (which is OSV and has plural marker suffixes) and the warriors’ language (which is SVO and has plural marker prefixes). absolutely none of the characters line up w each other lmao

(we can also see from this exchange that there’s no distinction between “go/pass” (i.e, from here to there) and “come” (from there to here), which is not something that i specifically noted before. interesting! again, i assume this is due to the capacity of these languages being limited.)

this is also our first possible (possible) indication of punctuation, with “question”. i’ve seen some people directly translate the “question” word as <¿?> (the punctuation marks), which i’m hesitant to do, especially considering that there’s no other evidence of punctuation in any of the languages. irl, japanese (and other languages) has a question word <か>, which indicates orally that something is a question—the bards’ language could easily have something similar.

we also see this mirrored in “not” in terms of grammatical structure, which probably indicates something about how auxiliary verbs are used/placed in this language (even tho “not” isn’t a verb—i’m sure there’s a linguistic category that includes the both of them but it escapes me rn). someone else on tumblr called this negative concord, and julia on an sss stream likened it to the french “ne pas”, and yes that is what this is, but it’s also… a little different?? my academic interest in linguistics when i was in school lay more in socio-cultural contexts than syntax so this is definitely NOT my area of expertise at all, so take what i say here with a large hunk of salt:

after some very brief research, it seems that negation can either take place at the sentence-level (e.g., through verbs like “can’t” or “won’t”) or through negative words (e.g., “nobody”, “nowhere”). so, a sentence like “i don’t go nowhere” (meaning “i don’t go anywhere”) achieves double negation through negating once at the sentence-level and once at the word-level. standard english doesn’t have negative concord, but some dialects do. different languages treat multiple negation differently; sometimes it conveys a slightly different meaning (from wikipedia: “you’re not unattractive” vs “you’re attractive”) and sometimes it intensifies the negation (also from wikipedia: “i haven’t never owed nothing to no one”).

the thing that i’m struggling with in the bard’s language is that the negation isn’t… attached to anything??? it’s not affixed to a verb or a noun, so really it’s not conveying negation of a particular thing, it’s negation of the whole sentence….???? which (in my mind) isn’t… really… negative concord. if that makes sense. like sure, there’s two symbols of it at both ends of the sentence, but it’s more indicative of the meaning of the sentence as a whole, rather than conveying smth abt a specific word. like it's not as if both of them mean "no" or each of them are adding meaning in a particular way. so. that’s why i’m more inclined to take it as a general grammatical feature of the language, along with “question”, and say that this is just how the language treats auxiliary/modal/whatever words??? it’s not as if we have other evidence. 😐

another option could be that negation w a noun takes places as a prefix (e.g., "not-warrior") and negation w a verb takes place as a suffix (e.g., "be-not"), so because of the OSV word order, you end up with something like ("not-warrior you be-not" or "a warrior, you're not").

HOWEVER. we do see some instances of the game's internal translation of some sentences conveying a slightly different meaning than a pure ('pure') negation, which makes figuring out the syntactic structure of this language kinda difficult.

if we take each of the "not" words as a negation, we'd end up with "not-hammer i carry-not", which is not "a hammer, i miss" lol. (to demonstrate w an english equivalent example: "i ain't no warrior" vs "i don't carry no hammer"). if you're a speaker of a negative concord language/dialect, pls pls feel free to correct me here; my intuition's going to be slightly off because i haven't studied any languages where this would be relevant. I think it could work, probably, but again, it's really difficult to say anything concrete without more examples. given its congruence with the "can you get a hammer" example, though, i really am inclined to say that this is just a grammar thing, not a negative concord thing (even tho negative concord IS a grammar thing—you get my drift).

questions that remain unanswered: - does the fact that "question" is two dots relate to the presence of dots in the verbs and locative nouns?

[charaznablespeteevee]

Would you share your thoughts on the Gundam you've seen? I added the first one to my list based on your posting about it (mostly the transition Char posting, he sounds like a fascinating character) and am not on Twitter to see your liveposting

Good question!! It seems like you want to know if I'd rec them so I'll answer based on that.

The original Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) absolutely I would rec to literally any anime fan. Both because it is a genuinely good anime, but equally because it's like. You know how people say you have to read the Bible to get all the references to the Bible in literature? It's like that. Gundam is one of the Bibles for anime. It's in everything. And you won't realize this until you watch it.

It's also a very good science fiction show just in general. The major characters are all great, the drama is compelling, and while some of the animation has not aged well, the newtype stuff has some super neat effects that are gorgeous to see on a big screen to this day.

It's also super accessible, the full show is available on Crunchyroll or if you don't want to commit watching a 43 episode show the three compilation movies are on Netflix and are a very solid alternative.

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985) - they got a big budget upgrade so everything is Bigger and More. More robots, more character drama, more romance, better music, and some bizarre segues into how men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Absolutely worth a watch if you liked the original Gundam because it continues to follow a lot of the original characters.

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986) - technically "skippable" if you consider 0079, Zeta, and Char's Counterattack a trilogy, which it kind of is. ZZ focuses on an almost entirely new cast of characters and the first half of the show is VERY heavy on the comedy before jumping directly into some of the best anime I've ever seen for the second half. The mood whiplash is kind of divisive among fans. Personally I like it and the characters are great. Worth a watch if you like what you've seen so far.

Char's Counterattack (1988) - caps off the gayass Amuro/Char rivalry and is just an amazing movie in general. Gorgeous visuals, and the final 15 minutes or so are a series of emotional gut-punches the likes of which I've rarely experienced in media. Must watch IMO.

War in the Pocket (1989) - six episode OVA featuring entirely new characters. This is a truly fantastic little series that lets you into the lives of a small handful of likeable characters and how their lives are affected by war. It's Gundam so guess how that goes. I liked it a LOT and recommend it. BONUS: This is a GREAT "starter" Gundam. It's short, it's very good, and you don't need to know anything about Gundam going in. There's a few references to prior lore, but they aren't anything major and a newcomer could easily figure it all out from context.

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991) - this is a movie that was originally going to be made into a TV show and it shows, they stuffed far too much into too little time and it suffers for it. So unfortunately this is the first thing on this list I probably wouldn't rec. That said the characters are pretty fun and the ending is very good, so you can do a lot worse if you're bored or a completionist.

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993) - this is what I'm watching right now! I'm a little over halfway done with it. This is all new characters and there are some interesting new concepts. For example the first twenty or so episodes were set on Earth so you got some really gorgeous scenery during mobile suit battles that made those scenes really visually distinctive compared to say, a battle in space. That said it's yet to really "pull me in" the way most other Gundam series did. For now I'm still waiting to see if it will do that or not.

Witch From Mercury - I'm assuming everyone knows what this is. It's gay as fuck, what can I say, and it's the entire reason I fell down into this Hell to begin with. 10/10

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

For your Q&A Tag, I'd love some Jedi Moon rambles :D

Heya! (From TSP's Q&A tag game)

I'll gladly oblige.

Jedi technically originates from the primary villain of early TSP drafts. In Drafts 1-3 he was an evil sorcerer, though his name changed each time: Warlock LV [the 55th], Quincy Warlock, and Quincey Moon respectively. In each of those, he had a slim motivation to just...I dunno, stop the kids from getting back to the portal by stealing their metal detector?

Anyways, when starting Draft Four, I thought Quincey was a bad name for him so I chose the name Jedi. I'd made a list of names to use and when I found Jedi on a baby name website I thought it'd be fun to name him that. I kept the surname Moon because I thought it sounded cool. I created Carmen alongside him because I thought having a partner in this would be fun.

However, in crafting their motivation, I realized they didn't work as villains anymore. Morally gray scientists, though? That worked. Them not having powers came from the sorcerers in previous drafts not having powers of their own and having to learn magic through other means, though that's obviously changed.

I also thought it was super unfair that villains didn't have powers. Like, what the hell are those undertones?? So I thought making them "good guys" was the best course of action.

Carmen's backstory wasn't actually that detailed at the time, but Jedi's WAS. I crafted out his entire life story basically, and soon thought making him have his own chapters to explain his actions would be helpful. I gave him a lot more attention than Carmen at the time.

Originally, I didn't have his mother kill his father, they just escaped one night. I also, for some reason, had this take place two years later, when his sister was also discovered to be Inutilia, but I decided to make it more immediate in Draft Five.

Speaking of his sister, Ms. Moon the teacher was originally Mrs. Moon, his wife, as she was in Draft Three. It didn't fit so I made her his sister instead.

At some point, I considered making Jedi/Carmen a thing but after thinking about it I decided no absolutely not I don't like that. Now neither of their sexualities align with that, thank God.

Pinning down Jedi's motivation was always super hard. It made more sense when I got his backstory together, but that's a lot of spoilers. Basically, he's just trying to make a difference, make the world a better place. His dad also used to have superstrength, but I found it cliche and changed it to something more powerful.

I always have fun writing Jedi. He keeps to himself and he's always super vague and confusing. He has a distinct voice and is awkward about everything. Full of regret but does nothing to fix things. He's only here because of how much he cares. Though I make fun of him a lot for being a pushover, I do find him super interesting.

Planning out his chapters is so hard, though, especially in Part Two. There's so much traveling and I have to make each entry interesting plus do some world building, which I find difficult. But once I plan out his chapters, I'm always proud of the result. It's so fun and thrilling to write from his perspective. The challenging bit is making him clearly Jedi but also ten years old.

Jedi, as a character, got mixed reception. My sister loves him because he's soft-spoken, my friend @cadotoast (hi) had a thing for him (sorry), and another friend hated this man's guts. It was quite funny, actually. That third friend softened to him, but it was still funny.

I didn't decide to make his full name Jedidiah until Draft Five and had Moon be his mother's maiden name. It was the opposite before, but I thought switching it was more interesting.

Making him a pseudo father figure to Noelle was decided while initially drafting Part Two, but in Draft Five I added it in Part One so it didn't come out of nowhere. I thought it'd be interesting due to her daddy issues that I unpacked more in Part Two. Moving it back made it stronger, in my opinion.

Jedi often plays punching bag. Making his life miserable and shitty is part of the fun of his character, especially since only part of it is his fault and most of it is not. A lot of my notes for him are to give him more issues, the poor man.

In Draft Five, I made sure to emphasize his love for science, especially the powers. He's super intelligent but most importantly he's passionate, and despite being depressed and unfulfilled, I love those moments where he lights up because he's made a fun discovery or he has to think a little bit. Or when he just wants to hang out with Carmen.

And man, I love him and Carmen as a duo. Solidifying them as best friends, and marking the young ages they were when they met, is just glorious. I've written early drafts of that meeting, and I like seeing it blossom into a friendship. I can't wait to get back to it because of how much they mean to each other. And their completely different demeanors is always so fun to write. Sure, they're doing unethical stuff, but that doesn't mean they're not fun and interesting to play around with. My notes on these two and their stories are so rambly and detailed because dammit I can't stop thinking about these two.

I hope this was a fun enough ramble and that it answered any lingering questions lol

TSP intro

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @finchwrites

@nebula--nix @literarynecromancy @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet

[piltover-sharpshooter]

what is your opinion on the arcane fandom?

Well, first of all I'm not in the Arcane fandom, I'm in the League fandom, very distinct from what I've been able to gather. I can mostly give you an opinion as an outsider, but take it with a grain of salt.

I can confidently say that the Arcane fandom has some very smart, funny and creative people. The sheer amount of art and fanfics is proof enough alone, and they've certainly revitalized interest in the IP. I've been very lucky to meet and interact with some absolutely wonderful people who have some amazing headcanons and ideas.

However, if we are talking in a more general sense, I feel like the fandom tends to oversimply the story and it's characters a bit? Not to sound like an elitist or like 'Hmm, yes, I'm so much smarter' but I think one of the appeals of Arcane is the gray morality of most of it's characters, that the 'good guys' can fuck up and the 'bad guys' can do good, and often it seems like the fandom prefers to misrepresent them to fit their character into a simplified mold.

WHICH considering the more darker themes of Season 2 coming up, somewhat scares me, because I'd like to engage with the fandom but I do not fully trust it.

[genericpuff]

I always enjoyed reading LO, though as of late I've gotten more critical of it and aware of the flaws in storytelling, art, pacing, etc (one can still like trash while recognizing it's trash, I guess), and it's been super weird being the only one in my friend group who's not seeing it as this perfect flawless comic anymore. Your retelling so far has been super refreshing and a joy to read, the art and character design is recognizable yet distinct and great on its own (I LOVE YOUR DIONYSUS SO MUCH HOLY CRAP HE'S SO GOOD), and like... I'm interested in where things are going! It's fun reading this! I still do enjoy LO (maybe it's the sunk cost fallacy, idk), but I'm invested in your version so much more now. So thank you for your work, it's really great :)

I know the story is focused more on H&P than the mostly cast of side characters, but are there any other myths that might get revisited as well? Eros/Psyche, maybe Ariadne since Dio is here...?

Absolutely, I say it a lot when the topic of "LO stans vs. LO critics" comes up but none of the criticism is meant to be persuasive debating, while it can be frustrating to voice our criticisms and be met with "yeah well that's just your opinion", we're also not criticizing the comic purely to convince you that it's trash, we're legit just engaging with the comic in our own way. The best way any LO fan can react to it is either to acknowledge the criticisms and move on, or not go out actively seeking the criticism in the first place if it's something that bugs them. But in the end, no one is talking about the comic in this way as a means to strong arm people into riffing on LO, we'll still be talking about it way past everyone's bedtimes regardless of whether or not you chime in and/or agree. I think a lot of people who enjoy LO have a hard time separating those two things because they love the comic so much that any criticism is automatically flagged as "they're trying to make a hater out of me". And yeah, maybe we are a little bit (because it's fun to riff on this comic and the crit community has genuinely some of the nicest and funniest and most creative people I've ever met) but for the most part it's not our goal to make you hate the comic, we can't take your enjoyment of it away from you, even if you do recognize its flaws yourself. By all means, enjoy LO if you want to, we won't try and tell you not to! Just don't think that gives you permission to tell the critics to stop criticizing because that's a double standard we just ain't gonna stand for LMAO

All that aside, I'm glad you're enjoying Rekindled! As for the other stories, I'm trying to reel in Rekindled's plot to focus solely on H x P because I feel like that's what it should have stayed as. One of Rachel's biggest mistakes IMO was when she stated she "wanted to include as many myths as possible" because it's clear it's resulted in her prioritizing low effort Google-level lip service and Marvel-esque nostalgia referencing over telling an actual cohesive story. I'm taking a lot of the additional myths that Rachel tried to do in LO and leaving them on the cutting room floor, but when Rekindled is done, I'm hoping to pick up what was discarded and do them as little side stories after the fact. I feel like that's the best way to do it especially considering so many of the myths Rachel included didn't happen until after Hades and Persephone were married (including Eros and Psyche). I'd especially love to tackle Orpheus and Eurydice, it's one of my favorite myths :) Dio x Ariadne is also one I'm hoping to tackle, though that one I'll probably work more into Rekindled itself as Dio plays a huge role in Persephone's character arc, we'll see !

[checkoutmybookshelf]

It's Not A Fairy Tale Anymore

Ok, I will admit to two things: First, this book was leaps and bounds better than ACOTAR in terms of pacing. I was not bored and I wasn't begging the book to HAVE SOMETHING HAPPEN. Second, I think I hated the last six chapters. Like a lot. For some objective and some deeply subjective reasons. And bonus third admission: My reading buddy for this series and I officially have Stockholm syndrome from these books, so we're going on to ACOWAR. But that's getting a bit ahead of myself, so let's talk A Court of Mist and Fury.

Yeah, hi again. This is your SPOILER WARNING. I am going to SPOIL THE END of this book, as well as the beginning and the middle. Consider yourselves warned.

CONTENT WARNING: Some mention and brief discussion of sexual assault and consent.

Ok, so first and foremost: this book understood pacing and it understood plot and I thoroughly enjoyed like 98% of it. I also appreciated that we managed to expand the world a bit, because ACOTAR felt very, very small geographically and politically. Getting to see Velaris, the Summer Court, and getting a wider sense of the politics and intrigue went a long way toward making me feel like there were stakes and point to this book.

Another thing I absolutely adored was the Shadow Fam. I said that Rhys doesn't have found family, he has trauma pack bonds, and I stand by that assessment. That said, I really genuinely LIKED Az, Cass, Mor, and Amren. Yeah, they all have varying flavors of tragic backstory and trauma to facilitate the trauma pack bond, but after an entire book of just Feyre, Tamlin, and Rhys, I was desperate for more characters, and I will say that at the very least, I wasn't mixing up the Shadow Fam in my head. They had distinct personalities, and frankly I'd read the hell out of a novella that really digs into Mor's backstory in particular, mostly because SJM is developing a worrying habit of denoting bad characters by making them rapists (See: Amarantha, Ianthe, Mor's entire goddamn family, a worrying number of non-Shadow Fam Illyrians, etc.) and I want to see how complex this world's conception of consent is. Because Mor's entire situation was coerced, which means that the only non-fucky consent thing is her deciding NOT to sleep with Az. Because no matter what she told Cass, she was having sex with him in a situation where she very well might not have if she wasn't under the duress of a forced marriage. Literally she either didn't tell him anything and just went "Let's do the sex at each other" and he said "sure," or she went "hey, help me get out of this forced marriage by taking my virginity so other dude won't want me" (excuse me while I vomit at the pedestaling of virginity) and he said "sure." While knowing (I'm pretty sure) that Az has the world's biggest crush on Mor.

Literally nothing about this isn't messy AF, and I would a) like to see how we handle the consent stuff and b) eat this up with a SPOON.

But even in the here and now of the book, the whole Shadow Fam have individual relationships with Rhys and Feyre, and I thought that was decently well done. To be clear: its not Tolkien. It's nowhere near the same level. But for popular fun books, I have absolutely seen worse, and there was enough here for me to hang onto and enjoy. If they leaned a little into archetypes and stereotypes, well, it wasn't too egregious.

I think this is where I get to talk about Rhys a little bit too. So I have only read ACOTAR AND ACOMAF as of writing this, but I'm in a lot of book and fandom spaces, so I've heard everything from "Rhys is the embodiment of toxic masculinity and an anti-choice piece of shit" to "Rhys is the pinnacle of a male partner, can do no wrong, and I would let him rail me in a cabin on a mountain top." I'm not going to stand here and say that masculinity in these books is wholly unproblematic, but again: I have seen worse. My biggest problem with Rhys at this point, frankly, is that SJM keeps trying to have it both ways with him. But the "he's half mysterious, slightly evil Shadow daddy and half trauma puppy with a dreamers heart" was super not working for me, not even in a context where it maybe should have. Like, yeah, evil Shadow daddy as a role to protect Velaris makes sense, but then literally everything else we get is a cross between a traumatized dudebro with his buddies and trauma puppy making eyes at Feyre. The gap between the two sides of Rhysand just hit a point where my credulity stretched and broke. That's not to say I didn't enjoy both halves of Rhysand, but they didn't sit comfortably in one fae high lord lord me.

I just also want to briefly address the man pain, because after the Dresden Files, my patience for angsty man pain is THIN. I literally rolled my eyes and went "what the actual fuck" when Cassian provoked Rhys into beating on him for an hour after Feyre accepts the mate bond. Dumbass "if you can't fuck, fight" nonsense has never been my thing, and on principle I don't like it, but given that Feyre is alive and well and grabbing a snack with Mor, I can't argue too much. Battle Ground really set a new low bar for me, so I wasn't even grouchy about Rhys's POV man pain chapter right at the end of the book, because again, Feyre is alive and well and made a choice. I will allow it, but its getting some light side eye. Finally, the other major man pain scene is when Rhys is...I'm gonna call it groveling because I'm not feeling generous, but he's basically giving us a chapter-length recap of the previous book from his perspective. It's tearful, it's earnest, it's all kinds of angsty...And like...I was kinda not here for it. It was not the worst, your mileage may vary. I'm mostly just grateful it was one chapter and not an entire POV-swapped book.

I also want to just real quick tall about tokenism and some...potentially problematic things with the Illyrians. They have some savage warrior stereotypes attached to them that them being Fantasy Scots in the Fantasy UK makes sketchy, given the highland clearances and the generalized othering the England did to basically everyone. Then we get their cultural treatment of women, and the whole thing feels...deeply uncomfortable. I can't even make an oomaks joke about Illyrian wings (despite the fact that Illyrian wings have all the issue that Ferengi ears do multiplied by a factor of ten because THEY'RE WINGS) because I cannot banish the fact that they clip women's wings, which has some deeply uncomfortable resonance with female genital mutilation in the real world. Literally not even the Ferengi did that. And then we get Rhys, who is only half Illyrian, and the token "good" or "progressive" Illyrians, Az and Cass. They're trying to facilitate gender equality and banned wing clipping, but like...its made deeply clear that it's not working super well. So the general message is that of primitive, sexist Illyrians...except for the three good ones. And y'all...I kinda hate that. I'm not complaining that we have Rhys, Az, and Cass, but the Illyrians are deeply uncomfortable in a lot of ways that the version of me that did a PhD is screaming about.

And now we come to Rhys and Feyre. Rhys and Feyre, who spend 89% of this book flirting like dumbass teenagers before Feyre falls right back into the pattern she established with Tamlin where she decides she is going to give her literal all for a people, and I guess we just have to hope she has a partner who won't let her and then smother her to death. Because she is in the EXACT SAME POSITION, the only difference is Rhys. At this point, Feyre going all in is a feature, not a bug, which just makes her assertion that she belongs to herself first feel a wee bit hollow...

But I will say that Rhys and Feyre understanding that they can leverage their bond and Tamlin being just...the biggest dipshit in creation...to actually get an upper hand in this war, and I actually think that now that we've got the teen flirting out of the way, Feyre and Rhys might be a good team. I hope. Please God let them be a good team. I know we won't get Evey and Rick in The Mummy Returns, but I would take even a pale, bat-winged reflection of that relationship.

I guess we have finally arrived at Tamlin. I'm with Feyre that he's not good for her, but uh...the MASSIVE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION at the beginning of this book felt wildly gratuitous. Like, Feyre is wasting away. She's not emotionally ok. She isn't dealing with her trauma, and Tamlin isn't helping. WE GOT THAT. But that was only like, the first ten-odd chapters. So it was a speedrun character assassination, but I thought we were done at that point.

Holy shit, I was wrong.

So, there is a writing school of thought in which every villain needs to feel like they're the hero of their own story. I don't even think this is a bad tack to take. It can help motivate villains or make them sympathetic. And when Tamlin swaggers into the castle room in Hyburn after the king has captured Feyre and the Shadow Fam, you can bet your ass that he feels like he's the rescuing hero swooping in to save his true love from the shadowy douchecanoe who put a mind whammy on her to take her from him. (Which I actually think we might have Lucien to blame for that angle? Since he had to have reported back that Feyre fought him? But the timeline on that isn't clear, so IDK for sure.)

Unfortunately for Timtam, his ENTIRE PLAN makes him look too stupid to live. He KNEW what Amarantha was like. He KNEW that the King of Hyburn was a factor of ten worse than Amarantha. And he STILL made the deal to let Hyburn invade through his kingdom and somehow thought he would HAVE CONTROL OVER THE SITUATION???? And yes, I stand by this, because he keeps trying to tell the king to stop doing shit or do shit differently, and is ABSOLUTELY FLOORED when the king quite rightly laughs in his face. Talk about not thinking a plan through. Literally, I'm pretty sure Timtam was thinking, "I will win her back and be super heroic" and that thought eclipsed all other thoughts, his common sense, and his critical thinking. Which just take the character assassination of Tamlin and skyrockets it. I get that he's not the one, SJM. I got it six different dick moves ago.

Since we're talking about the last six chapters, I also want to just touch on the faeification of Elain and Nesta. Literally all I could think when they dunked our girls was one fantastic chapter title from the fantastic How to Read Literature Like a Professor: "If She Comes Up, It's Baptism." That metaphor doesn't really map perfectly over this situation, but it also isn't really a stretch. It also harkens back to the really old cauldron mythologies, which tracks for fae mythology. Mostly though, if Nesta doesn't murder the King of Hyburn after that foreshadowing (which had all the subtlety of a two-by-four to the skull), I will riot.

Hoo boy, this was a long one, but I think it's time to wrap it up. The TLDR is that this book was really fun as long as I wasn't thinking too hard about any of it. When I do think about it, I can shred it to little tiny peices, but honestly that stops being fun really fast, so I choose fun.

Also my reading buddy and I have Stockholm Syndrome with this series, so stay tuned for my eventual ACOWAR review!F

[fernlessbastard]

Oh man, I'm excited! Writing is definitely a pain in the ass (I've taken many years of novels, creative writing, debate, etcetera). Your story is incredibly enthralling and so accurate in regards to characters, I'm surprised anyone would find anything (such as repetition of certain words) bothersome.

Nonetheless, I do understand wanting it to be perfect and I hope reading/proofing over it goes well for you two. ❤️

-🎲 anon

Thank you so muchh

And don't worry, it's not that my boyfriend finds it bothersome and such - it just knows that I'm an insane perfectionist about my writing, and if I later find some repetition or a wonky sentence I will proclaim that I've brought dishonour to writing as an art form and I'll never write again (I'm a little bit dramatic like that UwU--) (also I'd definitely end up writing again, it'd just take like a long time and I'd rather finish IUTMTM before the death of the universe/lh)

To be fair it is in a decent part that perfectionism that lets me write the way I do. Like, yes, writing badly is much better than not writing, and I do my best to live by that, but editing is a different issue - I've had at least 7 drafts of chapter 2 as of now (and I only change the draft when I decide there's a big part I want to rewrite from scratch)(I actually could post like the first draft here - that could be interesting, idk, I'll maybe consider it)

But yeah, I will slave over a draft until I've squeezed everything I humanly could out of it, in which case either I think it's actually genuinely good and I enjoy reading it (and I'm very critical of my work), or until I decide it's hopeless, and just simply rewrite it completely from scratch, either keeping only specific passages, the general idea, or sometimes nothing at all

Tbh I think it's got to do with the fact that it's not a medium that's "native" to me, so to speak. Losing Face was my first actual piece of writing, with my previous "attempts" (mostly stories for school) consisting of like, much less than a thousand word each. I started writing a dnf/xdnf smut after my bf dared me to, which got abandoned at 2k words (I low-key wanna post that at some point too as a little crack one-shot, but i'd have to decide if I want it to be an actual piece of writing, in which case I'd have to finish it, or if I just want it to be a "look, this is where I started" kind of thing). I was praised for my art, so I gravitated towards that, and the more I did, the more embarrassed and ashamed I felt of my unrealised "affair" with writing. I'd write elaborate descriptions of headcanons and scenarios, fishing for compliments to have an excuse to actually write something. I don't remember how I started truly writing, but it absolutely had to do with the support I always get from my partner. And oh god, how I adore writing. I've always loved telling a story, but what truly makes me obsessed with it is playing with language itself. I love painting mental pictures. I love elaborate metaphors. I love portraying ugliness in a raw way that paradoxically makes it strangely beautiful. I love the words that don't just express their message through literal meaning, but also through how they visually look, how they sound, what core and pre-/inter-/suffix they have, how many syllables they have (my favourite go-to example is in Will Wood's "Front Street" - "the gnashing teeth will masticate the bones from the flesh"); I love using those words to juxtapose feelings (such as describing something as both raw and ugly, and yet beautiful exactly because of that). I love portraying ugliness in a raw way that paradoxically makes it strangely beautiful. I love playing with rhythm and momentum and run-on sentences, I love playing with formatting, to make the text flow on the page, I love using subtle sarcasm and making fun of the characters and their flawed logic through a flat narrating tone, and I love sprinkling characters' unreliable, subjective thoughts with nothing to distinct them from the rest of the text aside italics (I think it's much more immersive, adds to a "pov" lets the narrative evolve with the way characters think, and allows for a better flow of the text that ""(...)" he thought"). I love having a narrator with that subtle sass where the "insults" are indirect. When I write, I have several tabs open with thesauruses and dictionaries, not because I don't know the words I use (I make sure to keep my language authentic and to not overuse complex words just because - they all have a purpose, and 99,99% of the words I look up I already know), but because if I look up synonyms/translations then I have all the possible words in front of me and I can compare exactly how they look and sound (I'm heavily visual, ironically enough). I love pulling from more common Polish metaphors/sayings to form a more elaborate, non-obvious sentence/metaphor in English, and I love using translating as a tool to look for synonyms/replacements that maybe aren't an obvious alternative. I love writing scenes that feel genuine and real, and including the "ugly", human parts. I love writing flawed characters, I love describing their inner worlds, I love writing their streams of consciousness - I love turning them into real people (to the best of my abilities).

I love writing for the process. And it's funny, cause I don't exactly have that with art always. I'll be honest - I don't always love sketching and doodling. I do love watercolours. I'm sure it's honestly visible in how I paint, but playing with colours, layering, shading, shapes, undertones, etc is just my favourite thing in the world. But doodling by itself? Heavily depends, and a good portion of the time I just want to see the doodle ready, or to skip to watercolours, if I'm painting (although recently I've been getting better at just enjoying the process). But writing? Sure, sometimes I just want it over with, but the only reason why I'm able to go through all the drafts and countless edits is because just like with watercolours, I simply love the process of perfecting it, even if it gets frustrating.

TLDR I absolutely adore writing as an art form, holy shit it's literally so cool and language is even cooler and just

Writing<333

OH also btw I have since checked my document, and I misremembered - chapter 2 is 8k words--

[kitkatyes]

I have been, once again, obsessed with TMA and newly, TMAGP and well, it seems to have translated to ieytd so...

ieytd characters assigned with fears

Obligatory warning for spoilers, both tma and all the ieytd games

While I'd love to have a set fear for every character in the games, I don't really know too much about the less-mentioned characters but I still have a decent chunk of them.

Linebreak because I definitely over-analysed this

So we all agree that the Agency has a distinct Eye flavour, right?

Reginald is definitely solely Eye-- more so in the watching aspect. He doesn't have anything in the Knowing department (be so real right now, he's dumb as bricks /aff) but definitely Watches his agents with a close eye.

Prisim on the other hand, while tinged with the Eye definitely has been affected by the Buried. In the sense that she is constantly buried under her expectations to achieve. She created the TK implant, she has to live up to those standards.

Director Morales is definitely like the Elias of the Agency. Does nothing but look pretty for the Eye, serving as a vessel.

Phoenix is really hard to decipher. I originally thought they'd be Desolation because of the fire motif but thinking about it more, they're a bit closer to the End with their penchant to avoid death.

Honestly, Zor reeks of the web. They hide in the shadows orchestrating their evil plans, coordinating and manipulating as many people as they can.

Fabby is an interesting one to me. She's definitely the Hunt. She finds so much joy in creating these traps for unsuspecting EOD agents to fall witness to. The thrill of the hunt and all that jazz.

Hivemind is so silly. So silly that they're somehow both the Web and Spiral. We see that he's got the mind control device in ieytd 3 as well as a mind-wiper. I'm sure anyone would feel like they're going crazy if they're suddenly missing a decent chunk of their memory.

Solaris is vast. She loves space and practically lived on the death engine. But, I can also see her being affected by the Lonely. She doesn't exactly have anyone stable considering the rotating cast of people sent to work on the Death Engine.

Anna gives off Slaughter vibes. I don't really know how to describe it other than the music motif she has. Pied Piper and all that shit.

Daniel Sans, despite the fact he has like, two minutes of screentime ABSOLUTELY is Corruption. Bro wants to unleash a supervirus??? Tell me that doesn't scream Corruption.

John Juniper. Oh, Juni. He has definitely been affected by the Eye. Being an actor in the spotlight would have consequences. But, I see him affiliated with the Stranger. He'd be so uncanny with his masks, both literal and metaphorical.

Ollie is Lonely. He's been stuck underwater for HOW long? That'd do something to a person

[drudeger]

Beyblade Burst Quadstrike Review

(spoiler warning for the entire show)

ok so let's talk quadstrike.

I think we can all acknowledge the low expectations we had for a hasbro produced season of the anime, and while the season definitely delivered on those expectations in some aspects, it also managed to surprise me with its quality in others.

Animation

let's start with the animation. the quality of the animation ranged from abysmal to passable for a large majority of the season, with the only really good animation being reused from previous seasons. that being said, in a couple of episodes, including the first and last, it was actually pretty good. overall, I'd say the quality was most comparable to that of the sixth season with only some episodes ever managing to surpass or dip below that.

Voice Acting

the voice work was great overall. the returning cast from quaddrive maintained a level of voice acting quality on par with that season, which is to say, pretty damn good and it’s a similar story for the returning cast from before quaddrive. you might expect the part of the cast returning from a 2+ year hiatus from their previous roles to need to readjust and settle back into performing their characters, but honestly most of them seemed perfectly comfortable jumping back into it with the only exceptions being xander and kit. both character voices definitely feel just slightly rusty, but considering the massive ~4 year real life time gap, you really can’t blame them and honestly they do a great job getting mostly settled back into their roles pretty quickly.

when it comes to the casting decisions made for quadstrike specifically, kieran regan was a great choice to portray a more grown-up and mature ken and he absolutely nailed the role. keru and besu’s voices were also just right, sounding like characters that are voiced by ken but are still distinct-sounding from him, and the quality of all three performances speaks to kieran’s skill.

anjali kunapaneni was practically perfect as pri, giving her a full voice that matches her character but doesn’t overdo it with shoutiness despite pri’s boisterous personality, balancing it out to accentuate the more cool outward appearance she tries to impress upon other bladers. they really bring a level of depth and nuance to their performance that gives pri a very real and unique voice and it was easily the best voice performance in the season.

darren delfin’s performance as pax is definitely a close second and his ability to portray character depth shows through a lot here with the subtle differences in tone when pax is being disingenuous (e.g. when he pretends to be happy about pri making friends) and when he genuinely wants to show appreciation and admiration (e.g. when he talks about his admiration for red eye.) honestly, I’d be lying if I said I’d caught any of this on first watch. it’s just not the sort of depth I believed I had any reason to look out for. the only reason I say it was the second best performance and not the first is because the accent feels awkward and it doesn’t sound quite right, an unfortunately important skill gap when you’re asked to voice a character with a foreign accent.

Plot

the plot itself was. ok. plot points were arranged in a sensible enough order and it almost never managed to feel too forced. except for the part where pax just calls aiga up on his phone and THAT'S how they decided to have pax challenge aiga? and absolutely nobody questions how pax got his number?? I literally laughed out loud when that happened like bro what??? 😭😭 also that one part in the finale where we get a somewhat dramatic shot with some random fucking kid and get absolutely zero explanation????? aside from these (admittedly incredibly weird) oddities, the plot was ultimately unengaging but passable. there really just isn't a lot to say about it due to its overall lack of substance.

Story

but if you asked me to describe what quadstrike is actually about — its story — I'd tell you it's a story about a bunch of kids running around with highly marketable toys. which sounds comically cynical but, despite its best efforts, quadstrike struggles to be much more than that. although that isn’t to say I wasn’t pleasantly surprised by the unexpected amount of depth in some aspects of the writing.

Themes

the season has two themes, one of which is executed decently but neither being given the time or care needed to feel nearly as impactful as they could have.

Identity

the most prominent and complete of the themes is that of identity, which is explored through the season's secondary (arguably primary) protagonist, pri forsythe/quadra. the season introduces the foundations for this theme when quadra loses to drum in the abyssal tournament after taking off her mask. pax tells pri to keep her mask on in battle because it will increase her elemental power and make her strong and pri begins questioning if he's right. it was also revealed in a flashback that pax made the mask and when pri wears it, pax says she assumes an entirely different persona and becomes quadra. this poses to pri as well as the audience three questions: does pax know what’s best and should pri therefore listen to his instructions, allowing him to control what decisions she makes? are pri and qudra the same or different? if “becoming quadra” makes her stronger, should she be ok with being her when she battles?

the first question takes a backseat for a bit while the second and third questions are explored, although we see it reiterated as pri continues to battle without the mask.

we are introduced to one position for the last two questions when, during a flashback, pax says that pri becomes a different blader entirely when she assumes the identity of quadra during battle. the other position is introduced when pri asserts that it shouldn’t matter if she doesn't wear the mask because it’s still her battling regardless. the second position is built upon when ken’s mom explains to pri that keru and besu are a part of ken’s identity and pri restates the question later that night, asking herself if she’s pri or quadra. after she loses to ken, he gives her some advice — that quadra is her too. then, after her first loss to xander where she doesn’t wear the mask, pri finds a letter to her from ken that says "it doesn’t matter if the mask makes you stronger. you’re you with or without it, it doesn’t define you,” explicitly stating the answer to both questions. with all of this in mind, pri decides she’ll wear the mask for her rematch with xander and from now on will wear it in battle at her own discretion. so at this point in the story, the last two questions have been answered.

having pri’s decision be one that retains her agency is the strongest choice they could have made, but having ken spell out the answer for her, especially not even an episode after he gives her his advice, just feels bad, and it ends up feeling unearned since she’s given such little time to actually struggle with the question and deliberate on his advice or develop as a character before coming to the conclusion she does.

(tw: this section contains discussions of emotional manipulation and generally toxic behavior from a caretaker)

but that’s only two of three questions and now that the last two questions have been answered, we finally get to see the first question being explored — does pax know what’s best and should pri therefore listen to his instructions, allowing him to control what decisions she makes? during the battle camp, we learn that pax was forced to quit blading due to an injury and it was his dream to become a legend like valt. this, combined with previously revealed information as well as pax’s constant use of phrases like “our goal” and “our dream,” makes it clear that pri partially accepts the role of quadra for pax and this sets up another part to the first question: is it really ok that pri/quadra center her identity around a dream that isn’t completely her own? while she does have her own reasoning for wanting to battle, she wants to help pax in his goal to create the ultimate elemental bey which was the entire point of him making and having her use pandora, the mask and the quadra persona in the first place. it’s a driving force behind the question, as we see pri struggling between her want to do things her way and her want to make her brother happy and we constantly see them both grappling with the idea that if pax is happy, pri should be happy too because they're convinced that this is what they both want.

as the story continues, pax begins pushing even harder for pri to do things the way he wants. near the start of the battle camp, quadra uses lightning pandora when pax wants her to use tidal pandora. pax asks why and intuits it’s because of her loss to xander. he says that it doesn’t matter if she loses, everything is going according to “their” plan, and pri lashes out from her frustration that he won’t explain what the plan actually is and he snaps, yelling at her that she doesn’t need to understand everything going on and tells her to just do as he says and she hesitates for a moment before agreeing.

later, pax tries to get wakiya to withdraw pri from the tag-team tournament because he doesn’t like the possibility of bell influencing her. jiji gets pax to allow pri to continue participating in the tournament by showing how happy pri and bell are to be battling and says there’s no doubt the two will help make each other stronger. and while pax gives in, knowing he’d only come off as unreasonable had he protested further, it’s clear pax isn’t happy he wasn’t able to maintain full control of the conversation and therefore make the decision for pri. this scene is meant to show how pax thinks he knows what's best for pri and wants to convince not only pri but the people around her of that too.

later, during the tag-team tournament, pax convinces bell to try and win the next match all by himself and he loses the match for both himself and quadra. pri, having deduced that pax said something to provoke bell, confronts pax and he says pandora should be battling on its own and the tournament is a waste of time. this upsets pri greatly and she runs from him. this scene is meant to establish pri beginning to realize pax might not have her best interests in mind.

then, aiga shows up to hell’s gate and challenges pri and bell to a 2-on-1 battle, and if they win he’ll battle them both individually. before she makes a decision, she calls pax and he says she doesn’t have to accept any team battles she’s challenged to, but she retorts that aiga will battle her individually anyway if she and bell can win. pax, not-so-kindly, tells pri to do what she wants before hanging up. this is actually a common tactic of highly controlling and manipulative people where they basically say “you don’t need me, so do whatever and see what happens when I’m not there to tell you what to do,” usually under the guise of wanting what’s best for the victim so when something does go wrong, the victim feels obligated to go back to them. she battles aiga with bell and without her mask and they end up losing. everything pax has done so far has been to convince pri to give up her individuality for the sake of achieving “their” goal, and quadra losing this battle is exactly what pax wanted to happen so she’d feel obligated to listen to him.

after the first couple of rounds in the champion challenge tournament and the first individual battle is announced as kit vs quadra, pax confronts pri and tells her she must win against aiga and that everything will work out if she just listens to him and she once again agrees. during the match, wakiya and valt explain to aiga pax’s situation and valt posits that pri took up pandora and the identity of quadra to carry on pax’s dream of becoming a legend. aiga restates the thematic question, asking if that’s what quadra wants and explains that he couldn’t ever see himself blading for the sake of someone else’s dream. after quadra loses, pax confronts her and tells her pandora should have won and that the reason they lost was because quadra chose a flawed strategy. aiga goes out of his way to defy pax and tells quadra her strategy was perfect. he declares pax has no say in the matter because it wasn’t his battle to begin with, which of course offends pax. then later, quadra loses to valt, frustrating pax even further and cementing pax’s growing belief that pri does not have what it takes to achieve his goals as long as she has any say in what she does.

later, valt gets a call from shu about the ruins in england and valt plans to leave to see what’s going on. pri talks to pax, saying she knows he’s leaving for england too. she asserts that it has nothing to do with them or their plan but pax responds saying that he’ll be the one to decide that, a clear declaration to pri that he’s the one who knows what’s right. he goes on to tell her that there isn’t any reason pandora should lose to belial and that if she loses, the only explanation is that she’s the problem. pax then admits he doesn’t believe in pri and challenges her to prove to him that he should. while at the ruins, pax declares that “his” pandora is the only bey capable of reaching the highest level of elemental power and pri hopes he meant to say that pandora was both of theirs, again giving pri more reason to doubt pax. aiga approaches pri and tells her she’s her own person and she should do things the way she wants to and reassures her that pandora is her’s as well.

the next day, it’s announced that quadra and bell will battle to determine who will face kit in the finals. pax tells pri to use twister break against bell but pri says bell knows twister break because of how much they used it in the tag-team tournament. pax says it’s the perfect chance to master twister break so she can beat aiga and valt and that bell shouldn’t be of any concern. he reminds her that it’s “their” dream to create the ultimate bey and then reassures her that pandora is both of theirs. for the first two rounds of the battle, she listens to pax but ends up hesitating before the third round, causing pax to insult her and say that if it were him battling, he would have won. this causes quadra to break from pax's plan and battle her own way and while she ends up losing, she finds herself happy in spite of the outcome. at the end of the episode, pax confronts pri demanding she tell him why she broke from his plan when she would have won if she hadn’t. she finally asserts to pax that, even if he would have won, it doesn’t matter because she isn’t him, she is herself — pri and quadra. pax demands pri give back pandora, but before he can take it, bell stops him. pri then proclaims that she’s been the one making pandora stronger, not him, so pandora belongs to her.

(end trigger warning)

and so that’s a wrap on the first question and subsequently pri’s arc as a whole. this particular exploration of the theme was good. it wasn’t nearly as deep as it could have been and the last two questions should have been far more substantial parts of pri’s arc as they have just as much bearing on the outcome of the first question as all of the things in the story that seem more directly related to it. as stated before, it’s frustrating that the last two questions get answered so quickly and require so little struggle or introspection for pri to find the right conclusion for herself, but the conclusions she comes to are those that would be rewarding and feel great if they’d actually allowed pri to earn them. the third question was obviously the most prominent with a very decent build up, though there could have been far more emphasis placed on pri’s struggle with it. we know how much she cares for pax and wants to make him happy and we know she knows to do that she needs to do what he wants, but we also know how much pride she takes in being able to do things her own way and seeing her grappling with the two conflicting motivations is engaging and impactful, but we just don’t get enough of it.

with all this being said, we aren’t quite done with the theme of identity as it is also explored a bit with pax, which makes sense considering he’s as important as he is to pri’s arc dealing with the theme to begin with.

(tw: this section contains brief mentions of emotional manipulation and generally toxic behavior from a caretaker as well as mentions of an ableist trope)

the exploration of the theme of identity through pax is shown with how he projects his identity onto pri. after it’s revealed his injury barred him from blading any longer, we see in flashbacks how devastating it is to him as it was his dream to become a legendary blader like valt and shu and pri sees this too. it’s shown to us how close they are, and that beyblade has helped them bond and so the previously presented information that pax made pandora, the mask and the quadra identity for pri and the constant use of phrases like “our dream” makes it clear that pax has to some degree imparted parts of his identity onto pri so she can carry out his dream and she accepts it because she cares for him. as the story continues, it becomes even more clear how he takes advantage of this part of pri, constantly guilt-tripping her into listening to him by reminding her that this is “their” dream until it culminates in her snapping and asserting her own identity to his face. pax is a character who goes through a devastating loss, becoming disabled which forces him to give up on something massively important to him, something entwined with his sense of self and identity. losing something like that would make anybody feel completely lost, and with pax the grief results in him pushing that part of himself onto pri so he can live vicariously through her. the logical conclusion would then be to have part of his arc be about him finding a new sense of identity, one that doesn’t require pri to subjugate herself to him, but they don’t give him that at all. in the end, pax doesn’t need to do any sort of introspection or search for a new sense of identity because he is simply cured of his disability and he doesn’t have to face any consequences for how he treated pri.

(end trigger warning)

Grief

and that brings us to the second theme of quadstrike — grief. this theme is primarily explored through the main antagonist, pax forsythe, although pri has some part of it as well.

as stated before, it’s revealed pax goes through a devastating loss after his injury forces him give up on blading and his dreams and the loss causes him an immense amount of grief. throughout the season, we’re shown through flashbacks how he feels lost without this part of himself and then it’s revealed he finds out about elemental power. he is in denial that his dream is over and he sees elemental power as a means to give pri the power needed to carry on his dream and he becomes obsessed with it and achieving those goals vicariously through her. it also explains his admiration for shu while he was red eye, a time in shu’s life where he had obsessed over power so he could achieve the dreams he had been unable to previously.

later on, after he decides he has no need for pri any longer, he creates a new bey, some sort of mechanical brace for his injured arm, and a mask. the mask actually conceals the vision on his right side, making it so he can’t see his injured arm and during the lodestar battle tournament, shu explains to pri that when pax sees his injured arm, it causes him emotional pain, compounding how much his grief has affected him and showing the extent of his denial.

(tw: this paragraph contains a brief mention of an ableist trope)

and with all of this in mind, you’d think pax’s arc should have been about him learning to accept his disability and the things it prevents him from doing, beginning a long journey of healing, but that isn’t what happens (and, to be clear, that journey of healing wouldn’t have had to have happened during the show. sometimes the end to an arc marks the beginning of another that’s implied to happen after the end of the show, and arcs that end like this can be incredibly powerful). again, he doesn’t have to accept his loss and grief, he is simply cured of his disability. aside from the gross implications of this that I will get into later, it’s just such an awful way to end an arc. no introspection, no emotional compromise, no real consequences for his actions. he’s just handed a conclusion and the conclusion is everything he wants it to be so they can force in a “beyblade is fun, buy our products please” message instead. and it doesn’t end there.

(end trigger warning)

with pri, we're shown how she sees pax grieving for this loss and how it affects their relationship. they’re no longer able to bond through beyblade the way they were able to before and pax can no longer find happiness and meaning through beyblade in the way he wants, which of course hurts pri. she cares for him and so she does what she genuinely believes will help him heal, taking up the identity of quadra and his goal to create the ultimate elemental bey and become a legendary blader for him. through her, we get to see the way grief impacts the people around the grieving person as well.

we know she eventually breaks away from his control, or at least that’s how it starts out. of course after what happens between pri and pax, pri would be going through grief herself. she denies to herself that pax just doesn’t care about her now that she’s asserted her own identity and this could have been taken in several interesting directions, but they simply go for the worst option imaginable. they have her continue to orbit around pax, every decision she makes from this point forward being for him, completely undermining her original arc and practically abandoning this second one. there is no introspection or closure and the only compromise is them compromising her entire character arc.

quadstrike starts out so strong with this theme so I have genuinely no idea how they ended up fucking it up so unbelievably badly. and the mishandling of themes isn’t the only reason quadstrike’s story feels like it lacks much substance.

Characters

quadstrike’s use of its characters for its story manages to be impressively refreshing at times, disappointingly safe and boring at others, and infuriatingly incompetent at its worst.

first, let’s talk about the secondary characters. this part of the cast doesn't really have anything all too interesting going on, which is understandable. they’re there for the purpose of serving the plot and the main characters’ narratives and they fulfill those roles perfectly competently. that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been more interesting, but what we got wasn’t bad. a lot of the issues of shallow character-writing with most of the returning characters are things that are rooted in characterization from past seasons, and at this point you can’t really change that without either dedicating way too much time to characters that just aren’t meant to be all that important in this season or completely retconning parts of those prior seasons. if this season had been 51 episodes, maybe we could have gotten some of the former as well as more time to flesh out other parts of the plot and story, but that just wasn’t ever going to be in the cards for quadstrike.

Bell

now let’s get into the protagonists. between bell and pri, bell is very clearly the weaker character and it’s not a close competition. while pri’s arc is written to develop a theme as well as to explore her as a character, bell isn’t given an arc at all. well, ok, he gets an “arc” where the conclusion is just for him to upgrade his beyblade again so hasbro has more product to sell and it’s frustrating because they get so close to doing something actually interesting with his character.

throughout the season, bell loses. a lot. yes, he wins a lot too and a large portion of them are not deserved, but he actually does lose more than he wins. in episode 12 in particular, he’s provoked by pax to try and win the tag team battle with pri against hikaru and hyuga by himself. being an egotistical 10 year old, he falls for it and ends up losing the match for himself and quadra. while this moment is mostly used to further pri and pax’s story, bell is shown to be massively affected by this loss, at least at first. but of course, he couldn’t care less after the next episode begins. then, after bell loses the title match against aiga, he’s shown once again to feel incredibly upset and frustrated with the loss, but he simply gets over it immediately when he decides the solution is to evolve belial. and before any of this, bell loses to several other opponents as well, but only ever seems to be shaken by it a minimal amount if at all.

the reason I bring any of this up is because I think it’s such a wasted opportunity. bell loses so much and if they’d leaned harder into bell’s frustration with losing so many battles (and honestly if they’d had him lose more, like his final battle against ken and/or his second solo battle with hyuga) then they could’ve had an actual arc for him. like, have him get super upset and angry with himself that he keeps losing and maybe have him push too hard and end up breaking belial. that’d even give them an excuse to have him evolve belial. yes it would be a very similar arc to aiga in cho-z but at least it’d be SOMETHING. obviously this is only a single idea for the direction they could’ve taken and I have absolutely zero doubt any of you in the audience could come up with something more interesting than what ended up happening in the show.

that aside, bell was mostly just his usual over-confident and obnoxious 10-year old self committing acts of sillay mischief (which to many of you might be a negative but I love him and I like it when he’s obnoxious so this was a win for me<3).

Pri

on the other hand, pri was a very strong character for the vast majority of the show and was easily the highlight of the entire season. when it comes to her characterization, I found her to be very enjoyable. she’s kind and incredibly passionate and boisterous and playful but she tries to put on a cooler outward appearance in front of other bladers which she often fails at because of her hot-headed and stubborn nature. she’s caring but prideful which often ends up causing conflict between her and pax since she cares about making her brother happy by doing what he wants but she can’t help but disobey at times because she takes pride in doing things her way. her cocky demeanor in the beginning is par for the course with burst characters, but it becoming more and more a mask (haha, get it) for her decreasing self-confidence as the story went on was a level of depth I hadn’t expected to see in a new burst character at this point in the series. because of all of this, her dynamics with other characters, especially bell, are so much fun and it was an absolute joy to see her relationships with the rest of the cast and it was always fun to see her getting silly with it.

unlike bell, she was written with an arc in mind and the arc in question was pretty good for the majority of the show’s runtime. as stated previously, it wasn’t nearly as deep as it could have been but by burst standards, it was a massive breath of fresh air. seeing pri make decisions that retained her agency felt good and the moment when she stood up to pax and asserted her own identity was great.

so yeah, it sucks how they then managed to drop the ball as hard as they did right at the finish line. having pri be in denial about pax’s behavior towards her is fine, but they never give her the moment of realization she deserves. she never leaves him despite what he’s done and every decision she makes after standing up to him continues to be for him, which is such a monumental moon-jump backwards from the incredibly strong writing they’d done for her before. her identity once again becomes centered around pax and it is infuriating to watch play out, like literally what was the point of her asserting her own identity if this was what was going to happen afterwards. it’s like they just decided to completely drop everything interesting about her after her moment in the spotlight (a very familiar problem they seem to have with every strong girl character in this series hmmmmmmmm 🤔.)

Pax

(tw: this section contains discussion of an ableist trope)

and pax. oh boy what to say about pax. well, first and foremost his arc started out as another one of the best in the season. which isn’t really saying that much when there’s only two other arcs and one of those arcs concludes with the character just making more beyblade products, but still. but then they managed to blow it so fucking hard at the end that it easily became the worst of the three.

the setup for his arc centering around his grief and lost sense of identity was good, and the build-up throughout the season was even better. his motivations were understandable, but it became increasingly clear just how unhealthy his obsession with holding onto his dream was, not just for himself, but for pri especially. you want him to accept his disability and what it prevents him from doing so he can finally heal and find something else to live for and you really want him to see that what he’s doing is wrong and for him to apologize to pri. so why does none of this happen and instead he just has his disability cured.

ok, let me make something super clear here. this is a disgustingly and infuriatingly ableist conclusion to a disabled character's arc. pax’s entire arc centers around how he has to give up on his dream because of his disability, a common reality for disabled people in real life. it is an absolutely devastating thing to go through, but something disabled people stress is the importance of coming to terms with their disability so they can find some semblance of peace and continue living their lives to the best of their ability. there is no cure for disability in real life and every attempt to do so has resulted in failure at best and outright eugenics and genocide at worst, and so disabled people have made it clear that the “cured disability” narrative commonly seen in fantasy and sci-fi settings is a harmful trope. in some stories, it’s used as a “reward” for the hero, while in others it’s used as a copout so the creators don’t have to deal with having a disabled character or so the previously disabled character can have a happy ending. curing their disability is used as a conclusion to an arc because able-bodied writers cannot for the life of them imagine a character living a happy life with a disability and that’s very much what it’s used for here. from the beginning, I was hoping so so much that they weren’t going to do this, and I’d gotten my hopes up because of their surprisingly deep and empathetic handling of pri and pax’s characters for most of the season, but they went for the easy option resulting in an insulting and vile conclusion to an otherwise great arc.

(end trigger warning)

pax is, however, a great antagonist. as obvious as it may be to the audience, in the story it starts out pretty ambiguous what exactly his role is meant to be in the season, but as the season goes on, his mask begins to slip and his sinister personality becomes more apparent. this is actually a somewhat common trope with antagonists in the burst series, but pax stands out due to the fact that he isn’t even a blader until the last few episodes in the season. most of his time is spent as a coach to pri, using manipulation as his main weapon rather than a beyblade. again, not necessarily completely unique to him but it feels more present and impactful in this season due to his deep history and close ties to one of the main protagonists.

let me elaborate a bit: with drum and gwyn, the slow reveal of gwyn’s manipulation doesn’t feel as significant because, throughout the season, drum isn’t only naive to gwyn’s ulterior motives, but to literally every stranger he meets. we know he isn’t going to see it until it’s too late and we know at the end he’s going to win gwyn over with the power of friendship and beyblades. additionally, he has no previous relationship with gwyn either, so there's no reason to be invested or feel impacted when it happens.

with pri and pax, however, we see that they have a close familial relationship. pri’s trust in pax isn’t just her being naive by nature, it’s because she cares for him and has little reason to do otherwise. yes, she disobeys him early on, but it’s not out of a sense of distrust for him, but because of her own pride. and it’s not that pax just straight up doesn’t care about pri at all, he has thoroughly convinced himself that what he wants is what pri wants too. so as the story unfolds and pax’s selfish, controlling, and manipulative behavior comes through, it has a far more obvious impact on pri and therefore the audience too, and it creates a stronger reason to be invested in the developing story around their relationship.

and speaking of that story, it is easily one of the most interesting aspects of the entire season. pax’s descent and the slowburn reveal that he’s only interested in his own goals and happiness once pri has made it clear she doesn’t want exactly what pax does is paced so well and feels genuinely devastating. which makes it even more frustrating when they fuck it up right at the end. again. one part of this has to do with what I discussed about pri’s arc before. the fact they never give her a moment of realization means the break in their relationship is completely one-sided, which makes any realization pax has about what he’s done/is doing way less impactful. and then the fact he doesn’t even really have that realization, but instead realizes that “beyblade is fun,” a conclusion to an arc that pax never has, is just. what. and then on top of that, the fact he realizes this because of bell instead of pri??? there’s no real closure between them, everything is just fixed all of a sudden at the end. it just feels awful and it makes it clear that the only reason they never had pri leave pax was so they could minimize pri’s writing at the end and have bell fix everything and it is, once again, rage-inducing to watch.

and all of this — quadstrike’s unwillingness to dig deeper into its themes, its baffling mishandling of said themes and its characters, and insistence on derailing every interesting part of its story for a “beyblade is fun, please buy our products” message at the end (a message they could have easily ended with without throwing out every character arc and theme they’d established) — is why quadstrike struggles to be anything more than an advertisement. it’s a story about kids running around playing with highly marketable toys that seems to desperately want to be about a pair of siblings grappling with grief and their own identities after having experienced loss, but can’t be that because the toys need to get advertised.

Conclusion

so yeah. I enjoyed it. ok I know after how harsh I’ve been, you might be a bit confused. let me be clear: I don’t “like” quadstrike. in fact, I fucking hate it. I hate its unwillingness to defy its status as “just a children’s toy anime,” I hate what it represents as a symbol of the compromise and degradation of story-telling as an artform and art as a form of story-telling for the sake of corporate marketing, I hate how it comes so. SO close. to being something more than what it was expected to be just to fall short right at the end. I hate it!

but I also can’t help but love it. I love this series. I love the characters and their stories. I love the ridiculous and stupid shit that happens to and because of them. I love their relationships and dynamics with each other. it’s all so much fun and they all mean a lot to me, which is why I’m so hard on the burst series whenever it fucks it up. because I see so much potential in what’s here and seeing it be wasted constantly, over and over again, hurts. I know beyblade is a kid’s show and none of this is to say that it can't just be dumb fun, but the problem is when it clearly wants to do something more but ends up compromising out of fear, and I can recognize the parts of it that don’t treat its audience like idiots whose sole purpose is to be marketed to and I just wish it would wholeheartedly embrace that part of itself. I want kids to see stories about trauma, identity, grief, communication, etc. because these are real world things that kids are dealing with and are going to deal with for the rest of their lives and they deserve quality stories and art that teach them about these human things and about being human just as much as anyone else. so that's why I ask: why can’t it be that. when it constantly comes so close, why can't it just hit the mark once and be something more than a marketing trick. just once, why can't it be a piece of art instead of a piece of advertising.

with all that said, if I ever decide to do a rewatch of the burst series, you can be sure I'll only be watching quadstrike through episode 19 and then making up the rest in my head, and if you're wanting to watch the season too I'd suggest you do the same.

[sifonie]

AHH, okay, well... honestly - where do i even start with how awesome i find your portrayal of MM / sibyl to be?! from the moment i saw your account, ramone, i was drawn to it because it just seemed like such a unique premise to me 😍 like an original version of MM that's separate from canon? that is something that i had yet to see before i came here on tumblr, but goshhh, am i glad that i started to rp here with you.

your writing just has SUCH a distinct voice that whenever i see it on the dash... i can immediately recognize it, and i mean that in the absolute best way, because it's just SO good!! + that drabble that you made for sibyl a little bit ago is a perfect example of how much your writing shines to me TBH because it was very detailed and it flowed SO well. plus, i love the way that you portray sibyl as someone who is kind of merciless in the way that they regard other's, as villains who view other's as 'beneath them' is really interesting to me in a psychological standpoint.

and we'll always be in need of villains around here that don't mess around because, well, you can't have a story without a good antagonist - am i right? which i'd definitely consider your MM to be as they puppeteer people quite literally and use other's to their own advantage. however, they're also more than that because they have their moments where they act more... 'normal,' i guess you could say, as people are multi-faceted and can't be evil 100% of the time. which is also something i LOVE because it really makes sibyl seem real since people can sometimes contradict themselves and usually do have good qualities to them even if they aren't always present; though, i know i've probably said that plenty of times already, so i'm just sounding like a broken record here haha.

thus, let me just sum up what i'm trying to say here real quick: you've made sibyl into such a complex character who is equal parts capable of being a rather cold-hearted person and also capable of doing things like being a good sibling figure to someone else (which would be barton in this case) + i think that that is just inexplicably AWESOME. because i have to acknowledge that it takes skill to balance both of those lines of behaviors in one singular character, and even when they surprise me, they aren't ooc because it's just like i'm learning more about the character!! so yeahhh. i ADORE your portrayal of music meister and i just wanted to say, keep up the good work, my friend 🫶

how's my portrayal ?

HEY DID U KNOW,,, DID U KNOW,,, I LOVE YOU ???

so i saw this ask the day you sent it but i've been reading it over and over because oh my god does it make me feel good. Autumn, I utterly adore you, you're one of my dearest, closest friends!!! I am absolutely joyful that you enjoy my portrayal THIS MUCH... to send me paragraphs of praise... I really feel like I'm doing as well as you've said. Thank you so, so much for loving this spur-of-the-moment character I slapped together and made into a creation I love more than words can say.

My nerves and self-esteem are usually very bad, but I do think having you as a friend and being in this community has certainly helped me. I adore my mutuals, I adore Sibyl. I wish I could collect my thoughts enough to write back a long, beautiful message about how much I appreciate you, but I hope you can take this reply as a fraction of my thankfulness. THANK YOU!! <3

[tartrazeen]

I'm playing with the Mystic Knight polycule today 😝

I've never actually considered polycules in a fandom before, but as soon as @schimmelspore put it in my head, I dunno - this time, it clicked. This show lends itself so well to one because each character gives you a concrete personality to work with. It means even when certain dynamics aren't getting the same kind of screentime to show you what would happen, it's still easy to picture how it would be playing out somehow.

The dynamics all have something unique about them too, which might be why I've never thought a lot about polycules before. What I've been stuck with is "Okay, you two date like this, and you two date in the exact opposite way, and then when you switch, here's how you make sure all these exact same roles are in play but with different people doing them." Like a constantly self-enforcing hierarchy where every single one of them has a clear rank within the group, or a checklist of 'top/bottom/verse' that everyone has to complete. Or like a rote partner swap. Not fun for me.

But this is fun, because if two or three people are together at a time, you can't just slip in someone else without changing absolutely everything about how they interact with each other. Their relationships are distinct, and there's an equally distinct consideration that has to be made when someone else is added to the mix. There's always a slight moment of, "Is this person intruding on what these other ones are doing, even if they have all independent relationships outside of this?"

The best part is how I feel totally free from the boringly standard, "This person's a top and therefore also the dom, and this person's a bottom and therefore also the sub" fandom patterns. Like - putting aside how these characters seem so fluid across those anyway, since it's not something that just gets boiled down into sex, it feels like as soon as the tone or mood changes, everything else could change on a dime. There's a certain level of receptiveness that I get from them where they adapt to each other rather than inherently stick to their 'assigned role'. Even purposely 'sticking to a role' is situational.

There's just so much drama in this group that nothing has any reason to be consistent. Especially with the royalty factor involved in terms of who has a title, who grew up with a title, who's willing or able to put titles aside at any given moment, and how that holds up to the relationship that exists outside of any titles at all, there's a constantly shifting balance of power. To me, there are as many times where someone's insisting royalty plays a part in an interaction as there as times where it's purposely inverted, subconsciously maintained, mutually cancelled out, or inevitably overruled by the rest of the relationship (particularly where Angus is involved for that one). And like I said, depending on the tone or mood at that moment, that can all shift and shift again. Someone says something off-handedly and - bam. Things change, and there's a new question on whether they try to ignore it, notice and embrace it, or stop to figure out what it means.

And that's before we start counting the number of brain cells involved to realize, "ohhhhohohoho these guys are doomed if they pull on that thread" or "they are not gonna fucking notice that 🙃"

So for me, even though this hyperfixation of the past-several-months has been filled with many, many scenarios and daydreams of everybody getting along (or not lmao), one thing I haven't visualized is how everyone would get together. Obviously I have my favourite dynamics within everything either along the way or after everyone's discovered this can exist for them, but I'd like a little fanon narrative for how they first come together - so I can immediately reimagine it in forty other different ways 😝

Link to the full thread (the rough, messy draft version) for now :3

Yaaaaaaay here we goooooooooo

1. Angus and Rohan

Not like you'd think! I don't see these two getting together right away. In fact, I think they'd be dead last in getting officially together, and that it'd almost represent the polycule being 'complete' - quote unquote. :)

It's almost like they're bookending the whole thing: they're at the heart of this, they're the ones with the first connection of any kind (canonically!), and they're the ones with the most increasingly obnoxious "will they or won't they" that serendipitously serves as a springboard for everyone else to learn new things about themselves, mostly 'cause the others get to take a look at these two's mess and go, "LOL we are not fucking doing that."

But yes, they are my foundation for everything else. In my mind, if it wasn't for Rohan, Angus would very happily shack up with the other three at varying levels of shallowness or sincerity, but they would be entirely independent of everyone else. In other words, Angus would be cheating on all of them with all of them, and there'd be nothing bringing them all together. Rohan's the door to something 'real' - something Angus can't carelessly break and throw away, can't really outrun, and can't neatly separate into 'public' and 'private' relationships since Rohan doesn't 'do' that kind of discretion. Rohan's a painfully all-in type of person; he's the walking embodiment of a powder keg. Compared to him, everyone else is on the 'manageable' end of the scale when it comes to Angus confronting some genuine feelings, since everyone else is automatically less intense than Rohan is, and by the time these two actually figure something out with each other, those genuine feelings for everyone else stop being as scary to grapple with - 'cause again, everyone else is a thousand times less intense about it.

Likewise, if it wasn't for Angus, nobody would be getting together at all. Deirdre is too prim and proper about being a princess to initiate anything herself. Ivar's a guest in this kingdom, and while I could see him openly pursuing someone else in Kells - or Garrett, actually - I don't see him going anywhere near Deirdre (his host) or Rohan (waaaaay too much work to get him on Ivar's level). If Ivar did go after anyone, I definitely don't see it connecting to Deirdre or Rohan eventually. Those two are quite content to stare in sadly from a window, pining for romance with some theoretical soulmate that might've been in that cancelled season two lol. And Garrett? 😑 The reason Garrett wouldn't be bringing these people together is "Garrett." 'Nuff said.

It's Angus who's that common ground. :D It's Angus who's universally approachable, enticed, willing, and rule-breaking enough for "Hey, you wanna make out a little" to be a question any of them could actually be brave enough to ask (not Rohan; I mean the others), and for "Hey, you wanna make out with us" to be a question they get asked without immediately slapping the asker in the face and saying no. Unless that's their 'thing' and it's actually how they say yes. 🤔 Angus is too open for anything for his own good lmao, I love him.

So yeah - Angus is everyone's initial connection to each other, and Rohan's what turns it from being a fun romp that can end whenever into a full-blown committed relationship. Not to say that everyone's going to be as ungodly serious as Rohan is, but he's going to at least show that that is on the table. And I said 'initial' connection for Angus, because I do think some of these relationships could exist even if things fall or drift apart, but there wouldn't be something with just Rohan, Deirdre, Ivar and Garrett that could last. Angus needs to be in there to do a surprising amount of maintenance and distractions across these competing personalities. They'd kill each other without him, is what I'm saying.

But as for how they - Angus and Rohan specifically - are with each other...

:/

My God. These two. A mess.

I'm not as concerned with whether or not either of them consciously know or suspect anything. I have my preferences, which I'll get to in a sec, but given how both of them are, they're - hilariously - gonna act the exact same way no matter what combination of 'knows' and 'doesn't know' you'd use.

My favourite is that Rohan felt something for Angus back when they were kids. He consciously remembers the moment, and in my head, it was just that they were lying in the grass and making up stories about the stars, and Angus happened to look over at Rohan in a way that stuck in Rohan's mind forever. And in a very 'Angus' way too, so Rohan keeps seeing reminders of it again as they're growing up, since - like... well, it's Angus' face. That's just what his face is. And sometimes there'll be a moment where Rohan's like, "Hm, like that one night," and then go back to whatever it was he was doing - which he's become very good at, since he mostly thinks it's a neat childhood memory.

That's 'cause Rohan, our resident genius (even though he gets a tiny pass because he was a kid when this started), has taken this feeling as proof that they're best friends. The thought that it might not be platonic or familial has not even entered the farthest reaches of his mind, and every parallel sign he sees in other people's romantic relationships translate back to him as, "Haha that's almost like me and Angus. :3 Anyway, back to sweeping or whatever tf it is I do as as an apprentice." Sexual? OH-HO-HO that's an embarrassing thought, but it's totally normal because they live together and anyway Angus says he has dreams of 'lovely maidens' so it's basically the same thing and they don't have to talk about it. Ever. Hahaha.

And in my head, even though I have different ideas for what starts that conversation off, Rohan only 'gets' it after he's talked to Ivar. This is completely separate from anything Ivar has going on with Angus, btw, because Ivar can be trusted to compartmentalize his friendship with Rohan and his one with Angus.

Rohan - for one reason or another - asks for Ivar's opinion on him and Angus. It's a somewhat generic question 'cause Rohan's never said this shit out loud and usually doesn't even question it, so Ivar gives it an equally generic answer. But Rohan's not quite satisfied with that and tries asking again, still wildly generic but more insistently about it, and the repetition is enough for Ivar to see that Rohan's trying to get at something in particular but isn't sure how. They talk for long enough that Ivar gets it, and then continue talking long enough for Ivar to explain it to Rohan. Slowly. Multiple times. Small words.

And this is Rohan having to really, really push back on what he's hearing, getting borderline defensive to cover an increasing sense of panic (classic Rohan), because if what Ivar's saying is true (it is), then that means the entire friendship since at least that night under the stars has to be re-evaluated. And Rohan's brain has only got one little hamster running in its little wheel, so this is a long process that ends with the conversation winding down as he's completely consumed by his thoughts, only to pick up again a few days later when Rohan's gotten exactly 3% further in putting it together.

The only good news is that with him being so caught up in his thoughts, he has nothing to act on yet because he doesn't understand it - so even if he's being quiet and frowning while that hamster's spinning as fast as it can, Angus can ask if everything's alright and Rohan can honestly say, "Yeah, just thinking," without it feeling awkward or concerning. This is normal for Rohan; it's what he always does when he's thinking about something big, and Angus is comfortable moving around him like this as he's staring intensely at a wall and poking him in the face when he's stopped eating again. He'll just snap out of it when he's done ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

But then finally, the hamster's finished. And then finally, Rohan gets it. And that is when it suddenly becomes incredibly awkward for Rohan to be around Angus at all. Which is - uh... when Angus starts being a little worried, because it starts to seem like Rohan's avoiding him as if he's been the problem all along. But Rohan's there insisting "EVERYTHING'S FINE" in a way that means Angus shouldn't take offence, so Angus does the only thing he really can do and carries on as close to normal as he can until Rohan figures his shit out.

And oh 👏🏽 my 👏🏽 god 👏🏽 there 👏🏽 is 👏🏽 that 👏🏽 mess 👏🏽

The number of conversations Ivar gets pulled into with Rohan trying to check and double-check - thank God Ivar thinks it's funny and is being patient with him because it's funny, or Rohan would honestly implode. I kinda imagine that these conversations happen so often that Garrett stumbles onto one of them at some point, and even though they both freeze so Garrett doesn't hear anything, Ivar decides to just invite Garrett into this since who else would love to watch a human being tear himself to pieces by squirming? Garrett. Fuckin' Garrett. Of course. They probably wouldn't invite Deirdre since is Man Talk and she's a Girl™, but no one really escapes because Rohan is all-consuming and the story will eventually find you and he will take that as permission to unload all of his angst onto you too and then take none of your advice.

It should go without saying that Rohan is doing a fucking awful job of playing it cool around Angus back at home. When he isn't avoiding the guy, he's being a weird little teenager who just got his first crush, and that includes all those annoying moments of staring, stammering, walking into shit, completely forgetting to talk, talking in totally meaningless strings of words and almost-words, and then trying to brush it off with a power pose and a deliberate silence.

So Angus isn't having a good time.

Except that within that, there are still times where Rohan actually manages to relax and me a normal human being again. Conversations get past the awkwardness and finally start flowing again, chores get done, patrols are walked, herbs are picked, they don't train together because Rohan's a tragedy, and it's... nice. It's familiar. It's the closeness they've always had and it feels effortless in those moments, and as fun and safe and warm as it always has.

And then the conversation naturally peters out and Rohan is looking at Angus, wondering how he didn't see this between them before, grateful to have this with someone who's so easy to be close to...

... and just stares way too fucking long and goes back to making an ass of himself. And then runs off to go find Ivar and Garrett, who are - I cannot stress enough - loving this. It's so dumb.

As for Angus, idk, I kinda always thought he knew Rohan was clingy and touchy and generous beyond any other friend he's had, but took one look at Rohan and said, "That is a small hamster and a tiny wheel, he's got nothing backing that up," and wrote it off as harmless. Was it a crush of some kind? Maybe. Or maybe Rohan was just 'like that'. Either way, it wasn't causing Angus any problems, he enjoys the attention overall, and if it wasn't for Cathbad being shitty about 'bad influences' on Rohan, Angus could've happily lived without a single reminder that Rohan was a bit too attached at times.

So all of this? What Rohan's doing right now? It's very inconvenient at best. But at worst - and it's a race for Rohan to figure something out before Angus makes this conclusion - his idiot friend just decided he's in love with Angus after all, which would be horrible 'cause Angus does not need to deal with that. They've made it too far for Rohan to screw up what was a perfectly stable arrangement, and if that's what Rohan's trying to do, ruin it, then Angus is gonna be mad as hell.

And that's the first step in the polycule. :D

2. Angus and Deirdre

The complete and utter opposite situation is happening with these two. They've been openly flirting for a while, and the tension's always been there between them. Obviously with Deirdre being a princess, there's a line that can't be publicly crossed, but there's a lot that be heavily and plausibly denied.

It's mostly teasing from Angus at first - making fun of the princess as a joke with Rohan, then as a joke for just his own sake, and then as a joke that Deirdre starts to anticipate. She moves from being reproachful and scolding, reminding him of his place, to drawing a loose sense of enjoyment out of having someone she can return fire on. There's some calibration, I guess, in how hard they're allowed to go with that (again: princess), because some jokes carry a bit too much truth to just put out there. But Angus is surprisingly patient and Deirdre's actively checking to see if something went too far, and they're able to forge a shockingly healthy way to communicate.

They learn to gauge each other's reactions to see if their jokes landed like they intended, and they especially learn how to walk back what they said without killing the momentum overall. They're able to riff on each other, pause, take the feedback (which might be just be a purposely scrunched nose), and replace it with something better, or actually break character to explain what the problem was before going back to it, newly enlightened.

Angus and Rohan could never.

The effort and care put into learning how to tease each other, finding the line and carefully skirting it, and occasionally warning the other that they're going to try purposely crossing the line to see how it feels, becomes such a welcome way to talk that they start actually talking. Deirdre asks questions about life outside of the castle when the villagers are able to speak freely, and Angus gets curious about royal stuff and - well, Deirdre herself. On his side, some of it is just to be polite, and some of it is a hunt to find more things to tease her with later, but sometimes he's genuinely interested. She'll lie across his chest, head tucked under his chin, crown off because she's almost poked his eye out twice on that thing, and he'll idly play with her hair while she tells him what she remembers about her mother. He doesn't reciprocate on those topics, but he likes listening to her through it and being able to ground her while she's holding onto him. Maybe it's cruel to let her open up when he has no intention of sharing the same, but he's able to comfort her and distract her before she ever slips too far. He has a lot of practice with that.

Btw, they are absolutely the first two to get in bed together. This is all "deep conversations in the afterglow" talk - they absolutely had to burn off their energy before they could slow that far down again, and most of the time, 'comfort and distract her' just means Angus brings her back for the next round before he has to go to the hut. He can't exactly spend the night, and it's best to leave everything on a high note - which they can hit, because they have somehow mastered talking to each other. I have to imagine that at one point, they rolled over and high-fived. That seems like the bad influence Angus would be on her. 😝

There's discretion in their private relationship, because they're both highly motivated to keep this quiet. Deirdre can't risk anyone knowing she's been with anybody before her marriage, especially someone like Angus, so she keeps it tight-lipped. And Angus agrees with that, on top of having Rohan as his other consideration. In Angus' mind, Rohan and Deirdre are such an easy answer to his problem: it doesn't matter whether Rohan's got a crush on him or not if there's a bigger, more official relationship between Rohan and Deirdre. Then Rohan's accounted for! Problem solved! And Rohan likes her, at least agreeing with Angus every time Deirdre's brought up, so they're halfway there already.

Except that Rohan's also been very slow to act on any of it. And for all Deirdre asks about their friendship, she doesn't seem to ask about Rohan for her own sake. So yet another reason to keep from reciprocating too much (beyond it being none of her business anyway) is that he doesn't want her to get too attached. Sex is fine - sex is just for fun, but the emotions are what make or break it. Fortunately Rohan being Rohan will sweep anyone away in those once he's got his mind set on someone, so it's only a matter of managing Deirdre until then and keeping her in a pleasant state of satisfied and noncommittal fun.

... And then she wants to date him.

As in 'publicly'.

Maybe 'date' is the wrong word, but she certainly wants him to escort her to more and more shit. She volunteers him for it without even asking - like she was Rohan, right down to the terrible communication - and then stares at him with pleading, guilt-laden and royal eyes while she waits for him to answer, "Don't you want to go with me?"

And he, being a peasant, can only get so close to saying 'no'.

So she hears 'yes' and keeps doing it.

He's always quick to reassure Rohan that it's to punish him or something, haha, their little joke, dragging the common thief to some who-the-hell-cares as her guest to parade him in front of those who properly matter. Rohan (who, as I mentioned, is working on that hamster wheel about Angus) seems to accept this without much convincing, assuming he heard what Angus said in the first place. And Deirdre, of course, is expertly convincing everyone else that this is just as friends. He's only got to worry about Rohan - and, uh, apparently the king, who just wants to make extra sure that this stays 'professional'.

There are only like two dads in this show and they're both suspicious of him. 🤣 And I wonder why he's got such a complex...!

3. Angus and Garrett

This one's fun, because it's Garrett.

Garrett has such weird arc in the show. To this day, I think the worst decision they made was having the episode where he leaves for a bit be so far after he's already disappeared (he's gone in episode 28 but isn't shown to be sailing away until episode 39 for some reason, then disappears again to come back for the final fight 🙄), but even within that he's got an odd arc. He starts off as super arrogant and dickish, which is a blast! Then he gets schooled by Fin Varra and comes down a little, then gets kinda neutral-to-nice near the end of the show. He really loses his spice. Less fun.

But in all the time we see him, we never see him get to a point where it'd make reasonable sense for him to tie someone to a tree.

Angus, as far as I can tell, has a unique way to get under Garrett's skin. On purpose too - he openly laughs at Garrett in that episode with the drageen ("ummm a baby dragon is called a drageen" shut up rohan, no one asked), and he's merrily scamming Garrett out of the Dragonbow later too. In fact, the only other real spice we get from Garrett at all is when he asks Angus what happened to the Dragonbow, 'cause other than that, the guy stays fairly bland.

So to me, Angus is having fun tormenting Garrett once he becomes a Mystic Knight, partly as revenge from Garrett's (justified?) decision to tie him to a tree and gag him, and partly because it's another royal who's overly prim and proper and look how much fun he's been having with Deirdre. And Garrett's even easier to rile up because he never lets himself stoop so low as to 'return fire'. It's heaven.

And then Garrett comes back and he's boring now. :/

'Fixing this' is the key to getting Garrett tangled up in what's to come. 😏 Sure, there's probably something going on with Lynette over in that wherever that Garrett was visiting, but Lynette was such a nice princess - even nicer than Deirdre - and that's boring. Garrett's boring. Garrett used to be so much fun and now he's all patient and helpful and a team player. And Angus takes it as a personal challenge to see just how far that patience and helpfulness will go, 'cause it wasn't that long ago he was tied up, and he known he can get that side out of Garrett again.

Their dynamic is an excellent "Why don't you make me shut up" deal, which fits the first episode where we even got Garrett, and balances End-Show personality with more of the defining characteristics we know him for. He gets to be both, because just like Deirdre, there's a separation between his private and public relationships: one, he's as arrogant and unbearable as ever, and two, he's a changed man who's found some peace from having to brag about his accomplishments all the time. And Angus is ecstatic that the switch between public to private is so immediate now that he's cracked through the shell.

I see these two as being purely physical, in a way where when Rohan starts complaining about how in love he is with Angus, Garrett doesn't see the need to mention what he's been doing behind closed doors. It isn't any of Rohan's business really, and it doesn't interfere with whatever mess those two have made of their confusingly devoted friendship.

Besides, if Angus wants to stop, they can stop. It would simply mean Angus loses.

And as Garrett was pleased to discover, Angus hates losing to him as much as Garrett hates losing at all.

Their situation is almost like a permanent state of combat. Angus should've balked by now, and Garrett shouldn't have ever come close to balking, but he starts to realize what kind of person would willingly choose to live - and be best friends with - someone like Rohan. For all the complaining he'll do and concern he'll show and caution he'll preach on the battlefield, Angus is kind of... crazy? Apparently? And as he's alone with Angus one moment being casually asked if he'd like to yield, and with Rohan the next hearing him whine about how difficult it is to decide what to do, Garrett slowly starts to gain a low note of empathy for the mighty, great, and legendary warrior Draganta, hopelessly defeated by telling his friend, "I like you."

The curiosity that it stirs has Garrett making the first move emotionally. It's not that they don't talk outside of their private wars, but they don't have the same friendship as everyone else. Despite things going well with Rohan and Ivar out on the battlefield and as fellow royals, newly or not, Garrett's still a 'guest'. An outsider. In a land that he was meant to one day rule alongside Deirdre. But good luck finding any help with that from Rohan, who's back to learning how to walk in a straight line. Ivar is more helpful in theory, but Garrett needs someone who's from this land.

Angus.

Obviously.

But to strike up such a conversation so suddenly might have been off-putting to the peasant, so Garrett tries to soften it by trying to get to know Angus better.

The first thing he 'knows' is to cut that shit out and get to the point. Fair enough.

So they talk about Deirdre, and while yes, Angus is guarded in what he says, there's plenty of useful information for him to work with. Importantly, there are plenty of useful events that Angus would rather genuinely choke than have to keep going to. Perfectly normal events in Garrett's opinion, but if Angus is going to throw a fit and waste that energy on Deirdre (who he very much knows about, since Angus at his most guarded is still fairly careless), then Garret gains nothing and might as well go in his place. And Angus is delighted to start arranging that.

But that still leaves one matter unsolved. And as noted earlier, Garrett hates to lose. So his attention starts to turn towards Angus' reluctance to start talking about himself, expecting to have to push, and is floored by the total lack of resistance. Instead, Angus dryly drops a list of facts about himself, sucking away any of the thrill of the hunt that Garrett was readying himself for. In their world, this counts as another loss, but the truly frustrating part is that Angus isn't playing it as one of his taunts. It's serious; Angus truly isn't interested in talking about himself. About things, sure, and about others, but he seems to have predefined himself as 'uninteresting' without any input from Garrett (who had also prepared to agree with that assessment, but wanted to make it himself). And that drives Garrett right up the wall. It's the first true challenge Angus has ever posed to him, and it's as inexplicable as it is insurmountable.

So Garrett does what he always does: refuses to be defeated.

He needs information, just like he needed it for Deirdre. Except now he needs it about Angus. And of course, the resident Angus expert iiiiiiiiis broken oh right Rohan is useless.

But.

Ivar isn't.

And Garrett isn't a fool.

The talks they've been having with Rohan have been including more insight from Ivar lately, and it's surpassing what even Rohan could've known pre-hamster.

(ya know what? i know these posts have a text limit on mobile, so i'll just post this here and continue it in the reblog. :3 please forgive any typos you see in this one - i'm just moving right along, which unfortunately locks them all in 🥲)

[whiskeyswifty]

How influential do you think Taylor is in the fashion industry

hmmmmm interesting question and i think i struggled with answering directly or succinctly because it depends on what you mean by the fashion industry.

If you mean the from the top down, fashion designers and editorial stylists and the like, i think she has little to no impact on their creative process. By that I mean i doubt that she is any designers' muse (maybe Stella? but muse might be too strong of a word and stella has had her distinct style wayyy before meeting taylor), nor does she incorporate what you'd probably call "high fashion" into her visuals in any way that is groundbreaking or creatively stimulating. She's also not someone who engages with high fashion on the red carpet either, very rarely wearing something that pushes the boundaries or shows she has any sort of distinct style of her own that sets her apart from others. First current musicians that come to mind when I think of that are Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Rihanna, Beyonce, Dua Lipa, Lizzo, and Billie Eilish. The way they engage with high fashion in their work and appearances is definitely more of the boundary pushing, conversation starting variety and exciting if you're interested in fashion. Whether you think it's "good" or "bad" is almost irrelevant because it's interesting, and that's the most important thing for fashion to be, above all else. They use fashion to create these larger than life personas and characters and worlds, which is how musicians who've engaged with fashion have always employed it. I personally would guess that taylor is not interested in making a larger than life persona, considering her brand is "i'm just like you" relatable content. So outside of the occasional tour costume or awards show outfit, she and her team are probably wary of making her one of those extra terrestrial kind of pop stars. It's important that despite her near-billionaire wealth status and fame, that she dresses as accessible and imitable as often as possible. Her personal style does seem to be very accessible already, or at least offers cheaper imitation versions for purchase at H&M and Asos and such. (You can see the difference between now and the 1989 era when she almost exclusively wore a wardrobe bought and styled by her stylist, which is extremely common for famous people in general to do). And also, personally, i'd assume that since taylor already has talked about how she has a surfeit of insecurity around her physical appearance, dating back to her childhood, she is likely not interested in offering herself up to the fashion jury like that, to have her physical appearance discussed with scrutiny and judged as "good" or "bad." so i fully understand the reserved (in comparison to other pop stars) nature of her style and her choice to stay at a distance from a world that might exacerbate any branding or personal issues.

however i think if you mean if she's influential in regards to trends and style, absolutely 1000000000% yes. She's in fact one of the most influential musicians in the world for the white, 13-24, middle-upper class, female demographic at least. as far back as Red, I'd say, her personal styles have never been unique to her or originated by her, but her adoption of them on the public stage has fast tracked their popularity, almost every time without fail. The most recent iteration of it would be the folklore style of thick, chunky cardigans and long wool coats. You can see how popular the titular cardigan was in how often it's been replicated in fast fashion stores, and even the Evermore coat I saw replicated at Madewell two weeks ago, same plaid color scheme and all. Again, I don't think nobody was wearing wool long coats before her, but she took what was a style trend in its nascent stages, in more urban/style conscious adult circles, and popularized it for the suburbanites and high school kids and the fashion illiterate. I think she might not be a muse to any designer, but she surely is a muse and style bible for a lot of everyday girls/women who often incorporate elements of her casual style into their own. Myself included! and i'd say that's of equal importance and influence as having influence over fashion designers at the higher levels because at the end of the day, clothing is a business and the only real marker of success is what customers actually spend their money on. and if for all the gucci suits harry wears and the jaquemus dresses dua wears, the thing that gets customers to swipe their credit card ends up being a chunky wool cardigan? I'd say that says it all.

[transmascore]

as a gay trans man - have you ever felt like you are non-binary and a man at the same time, but also not actually non-binary? it's a very strange feeling in the sense that im for the most part i know i am a man and enjoy being one and don't feel like i am anything but that. at the same time, however, and usually when im around cishet people ( be it peers or family members ) i sort of "feel" non-binary, if that makes sense? then i spend some time considering the possibility, usually until i see a fictional gay man character i have gotten attached to ( i realise this sounds silly ajsjdjdj ) at which point im like "oh nvm definitely a man". so i guess in a sense i know i am a man, but at the same time i don't fully feel like one around cishet people? im not asking if i can be both at the same time but is this a thing that you have ever experienced?

Definitely an interesting question. So, one of my closest friends is a nonbinary trans man, where as I consider myself to be a "binary" trans man. And the two of us have had many discussions about our genders and how they differ.

I feel like I belong to a gender category that has existed for gay men, at least in terms of western culture, for at LEAST 300 years (and probably earlier). Which has gone by many, many names. The pansy, the fairy, the molly, the swish, the queen... so on and so forth. Which, today, we'd refer to as "the femme." But for the purposes of writing, I'm going to call it the "fairy."

The fairy is interesting because they existed in gay male space. And they didn't all identify the same way. Today, we'd refer to these people as trans women or as nonbinary people or as effeminate men. In modern times we draw these very concrete lines between them. But these people all had in common that they would date men (often masculine men - butches), existed in gay male space, present in a feminine fashion, often use pronouns other than he/him, and have a very distinct toughness about them (as they had to defend themselves from external homophobia as well as intracommunity femmephobia.)

I feel, very firmly, that I belong to this category. And that my gender and my orientation are woven together. I sometimes say that my gender is gay and my orientation is transsexual. I've also met some other gay trans men who feel the same way - that they belong to this gender category and feel very firmly that they are Men as opposed to nonbinary, but that their gender isn't quite the same as a cishet man's.

Now, femme is not the only way gay men experienced Unique Gender. Masculine men - butches - are also a rich part of gay male history, often associated with the leather culture. I know a lot of gay trans men who are butches that feel pretty similar to the way that I do about my femmeness, as well as people that belong in a sort of "futch" space.

I'm of the opinion, as a Man Of Weird Gender, that one of the consequences of attempting to understand gender is that humans have gone from using the gender binary to using the gender trinary, and that it is equally as restrictive. So many vast experiences with gender get pushed in an "other" box using this model. And in the way that a nonbinary person would not be happy with their gender being forcibly put in the man box or the woman box, I feel uncomfortable with my gender being put in the nonbinary box. I feel that my gender, while rich and layered and vast, exists firmly within "man".... but that it is also Beyond it. It's in a space that cannot be graphed on any diagram or chart. It's almost in its own pocket dimension.

But I absolutely have questioned myself. I've wondered "Am I just feeling internalized transphobia?" And i'd say, roughly once a month, I revisit my gender. Check in and see how it's doing. And I always come back with the conclusion that I'm a man. In fact, when someone assumes that I'm nonbinary because of my pronouns and automatically uses gender neutral language for me (such as "mx" or "auntcle" or other neologisms), it makes me flinch. It hurts just as bad as being gendered as a woman.

I think there's also something to be said that even those of us who are not GNC or femme, that being transgender means that we, as transmascs, have a unique relationship with our manhood/maschood. Something that cis men can't really Get. And I think that, sometimes, when we see the way cis men interact with their gender we're like "...What?" Like, I absolutely feel weird around cis men IRL sometimes. Like, I don't quite understand The Lingo or the Body Language. I've got my own sort of "language" that I share with other transmascs.

Hopefully it helps to know that you're not alone in this space of "man, but not in a cishet way."

[cowboyhorsegirl]

my eyes spy a character opinion ask game, so you know what im here to do.

i want the opinions™ on the emh!avengers 👀

(or just tony, and 2 other characters of your choice if the avengers is too many characters.)

thank you so muchhhhhh for the ask! :D

i started trying to answer this by narrowing down which 3 characters to put up on the bingo board and you can clearly see how well that went jfkdsljfdfk

Tony Stark

EMH!Tony characterization AND character design is so fucking *clenches fist* just!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know i've talked about EMH!Tony specifically at length before but unfortunately the words simply aren't coming to me right now to describe how much i like him (I like him so, so much). One thing I will say is that I miss the way his nose looked in the first episode before they finished yassifying his character design. He still looks great after they change it, but S1E1 "Iron Man Is Born!" Tony is my desi king and i adore him <3

Steve Rogers

I love EMH!Steve so much, I feel like of the multiversal Steve's, this Steve is much more self-assured, specifically in the period of time immediately after he is found in the ice by the Avengers. His character design took some getting used to, but honestly by the end of S1, he had fully won me over to the point where I no longer feared for the structural integrity of his top-heavy weight distribution and actually liked how Shaped he is.

This Steve is a bastard who's first name is Malicious and last name is Compliance, and we love him for it. I adored how you could see him actively loosening up around the other Avengers as he spent more and more time with them. The difference between Steve just out of the ice and Steve at the end of S1 is so palpable and it's incredibly satisfying to see him come into himself more as he adjusts to the future and to his team.

My only complaint is while i was enthralled by the [REDACTED] story arc, I'm still very salty about the fact that Steve is basically MIA for like. half a season :/ which considering the whole show only lasted two seasons is upsetting :(

Janet Van Dyne

I actually managed to pull together some coherent thoughts about Jan here, but the long and short of it is that I love her I'd marry her I'd die for her I'd kill for her she's a bestie she's my ride or die she's so high maintenance she's got terrible taste in men she's got incredible taste in women she keeps tissues in her purse but she never cries in public.

Her character design.... literally what is there to say? Perfection, perfection, perfection, *chef's kiss*, absolutely not a single note because she is flawless.

I also have a very soft spot for scenes in which her teammates protect her from huge explosions while she's Wasp-sized <3 <3 They all care about her so much and she's so fierce and competent but it's also so lovely to see her teammates having her back when she needs it :')

Bruce Banner

Honestly EMH!Bruce Banner is my favorite iteration of Bruce Banner/Hulk that I've seen yet. I really really really really appreciate how, even though Hulk has comedic moments, his character is not reduced to comic relief. And I loved how the show portrayed Hulk's and Bruce's relationship with each other, the way they're both distinct personalities who are both good people that ultimately want the same things (acceptance, the chance to do & be good in the world) while also being caught in this struggle to balance power and control between them that sometimes catches them at odds with each other. Extremely compelling stuff.

I love both of their character designs separately. I also love how both of them interact with other people, namely Clint. EMH S1 especially is rife with bruceclint fodder if you're interested in that ship!

Dr. Doom

Oh my god, what's NOT to love about EMH!VVD???? Truly, EMH is Victor Von Doom's world and we're all just living in it. He has such a commanding presence in the (sadly few) scenes that he's in, and I love how whatever the Avengers/Fantastic Four are doing is always incidental to what he's got planned. Like, yeah, he gets that they're trying to stop him but he truly could not care less about it and that's so hot of him.

My headcanon is that every single character in EMH has a daddy kink for Dr. Doom and NO i am not projecting and if i were what of it? Mind your business.

Hank Pym

Now Hank... Hank is a tough one. I don't think it's any secret that I despise him, and for all of S1 and most of S2 that was very true. The problem with Hank is that politically, I fuck with him the hardest, but unfortunately for him I do not watch animated children's TV shows from the early 2010s to get my politics validated. And unfortunately for ME, EMH made the character who has the best politics also the most annoying motherfucker in the series. *spits*

But the thing is, Hank makes a very intense about-turn in characterization somewhere in the middle of S2. Basically, what happens is that at the beginning of EMH, Hank is Ant-Man, some time in late S1/early S2 (I can't really remember whoops!), Hank stops being Ant-Man and it's all very angsty of him, and then the big characterization change happens when Hank is revealed to have created a new superhero persona by the name of Yellowjacket.

All of this mostly makes sense in canon, but even so it's kind of jarring, which is almost 100% due to the fact that the creators of the show knew they only had like 3/4ths of a season left to tie up all the loose plot threads as best they could. Because of this, the show ended before I could really see how New-And-Improved Hank deals with a lot of the personal, interpersonal, and professional conflicts that plagued him during S1, which would have been really fun to see and to judge if he really had changed as much as it seemed like he had. It's all very interesting. IDK how I feel about it.

I also want to say that, even though I (mostly) can't stand Hank and I desperately love Jan, Jan and Hank together is a terrible, terrible couple and it's not all Hank's fault either. Hank doesn't trust Jan's autonomy and capabilities in the field. Jan doesn't respect Hank's scientific endeavors and professional passions. Both of them fundamentally disagree on the roles and responsibilities of superheroes in society. It's a mess. I like to believe that if the show hadn't been cancelled, there would have been an arc of Tony and Jan dating each other in order to make both of their real romantic interests jealous, which would have at least made all this back and forth worth it, but alas. Alas...